


The Rising

by metarachel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Dean Whump, Dean Winchester Whump, Demon Blood Addict Sam Winchester, Episode: s04e07 It's the Great Pumpkin Sam Winchester, Gen, Gladiators, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, POV Outsider, Protectiveness, Psychic Sam, Sam Whump, Sam Winchester Whump, Season/Series 04, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:11:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8784421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metarachel/pseuds/metarachel
Summary: Sam and Dean were too late to stop the rising of Samhain, and enough nasties rose with him to make the boys wonder if maybe they should've let Uriel nuke the town after all. The flood of monsters and demons made themselves at home all across the country and quickly overwhelmed the fragmented hunter community--starting  with Sam and Dean. The boys are imprisoned with other hunters and forced to fight to the death against monsters and humans alike for the entertainment of their demon masters. As seals continue to break and the apocalypse draws nigh, Sam and Dean struggle to keep their health and sanity in brutal conditions, clinging to the scant hope that their friends have eluded capture and will find a way to stop this, and the even scanter hope of their own escape.Canon compliant nearly to the end of It's the Great Pumkin Sam Winchester.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WinJennster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinJennster/gifts), [HazelDomain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HazelDomain/gifts), [rivkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/gifts).



> Gifting to one of my fandom besties and two of my favorite whump/kink writers ever, because you lovelies inspire me and are the reason I'm writing my first fanfic in like eight years <3

We all know how this story starts: the world wasn’t always like this.

That can be tough to remember some days, but I try. We all try. It’s the only way to make it to tomorrow, to _care_ enough to make it to tomorrow. If you can remember when things used to be good, then some days you can scrape up the hope that maybe they’ll be good again.

The Winchester brothers, the ones the demons fight in the ring most often these days, are better at hope than most—which I guess maybe you would be if you once got rescued from actual, literal Hell. They ain’t always chipper, and almost never at the same time, but that’s the way they’ve done everything for the four months I’ve known them: prop each other up, support each other’s weaknesses. Yesterday Dean railed about _let the damn world burn, Sammy, let them kill us, I don’t care_ while Sam had been the hopeful one, something about _Cas and Bobby are still out there, Ellen and Jo are still out there._ Today it’s Dean consoling Sam, even though Dean’s the one who nearly had his spine ripped out by a Wendigo in the arena last night. Or maybe _because_ of that; confinement and drudgery leave him restless and despairing, but pain makes him _angry_.

And he’s in a lot of it right now, I can tell just from the way Sam’s hovering, though the only real hint from Dean is how still he’s holding. His breathing is unlabored, that dangerously pretty face earnest and smooth as he murmurs to Sam: _I’m gonna be fine. Chicks dig scars, remember? I’ll heal up and we’ll kill these sons of bitches, every last one of them, I promise, Sammy._

But it’s not like him not to get out of bed, even less like him to rest face-down. Especially on the bottom bunk (which he _never_ lets Sam have; _I’m the big brother, Sammy, it’s_ my _job to protect_ you.) The position makes him extra vulnerable to more than one kind of assault—a lesson he learned early in spectacularly ugly fashion. Fortunately, Sam’s ruthlessness is on display today, and every one of our cellmates is giving them a wide berth, both bunks on either side of theirs vacated for safer waters. Sam won’t let anything else happen to Dean today unless and until the guards drag him away.

Sam glares up at me across the bunk between us like he’s read my mind, and who knows, maybe he has. I’ve heard the rumors—they’ve been circulating road houses and hunter networks for over a year. I never knew what to believe, though, until I got stuck in the same damn cage with him. The monsters bring him demon blood almost every day, just a few drops before each fight like clockwork. He’s a junkie, no question about it—though how you get addicted to something like _that_ I got no fucking idea—strung out all the time like they never give him enough. He used to fight them like a wildcat, took three vamps the first time to hold him down and pry his jaw open. The second time they got smart and made Dean scream until he swallowed. He still hates it, but he won’t put Dean through that again, and anyway he clearly needs it. When he finally gets that hit . . . You realize how _big_ the guy is, how incredibly dangerous and strong and scary. You dare to have hope, for a moment. Maybe one day he really will kill them all.

Question is, will he take the rest of us out in the process? Sometimes I'm not so sure the kid registers collateral damage, even as bad as he seems to feel when the battle rage fades. And if we somehow get in his way, or get  _put_ in his way as human shields, he might tear right through us. Definitely would if we hurt his brother. The men who’d ambushed Dean the week he got here . . . Sam came back from the arena in the middle of the mess, and five minutes later all four of them were dying slow and screaming, dicks ripped clean off. The demons were so damn impressed they barely even punished him, all things considered—just strung them both up in front of us all and spent half an hour acquainting them with shock prods. Which sure, yeah, sounds pretty bad, but at least it wasn’t an eye for an eye—or a dick for a dick, in this case.

 _Shit_ , Sam’s still glaring at me, one hand curled protectively around Dean’s bare shoulder, his entire massive body between his brother’s clawed-up back and my line of sight. “Sorry,” I say, just in case he really _was_ reading my mind. I hold up both hands in surrender or peace—whichever Sam wants right now, he can have.

He doesn’t acknowledge the apology _or_ the gesture. Just says, like he hadn’t caught me thinking about his brother’s gang rape and their subsequent torture, “They’re gonna fight me tonight.”

His hand is trembling minutely on Dean’s shoulder. He’s not afraid; he just needs a hit. “Probably.”

He points his chin back at Dean, then skims his eyes around our cage, twenty feet by thirty or so and lined on three walls with mostly-occupied bunk beds. Then his eyes return to me, and his gaze is so intense I feel it in my chest, a pressure that makes it hard to breathe. He doesn’t say anything else. My heart beats hard beneath his stare, beneath that pressure I might not just be imagining, and it takes me half a minute to figure out what he wants.

“I’ll watch him,” I finally say. I don’t say it lightly. Not everyone in this cage is as afraid of Sam as they should be. And there are plenty of monsters with keys to this cage that Sam can’t touch no matter _what_ they do. Another lesson learned in spectacularly ugly fashion: the vast number of creative and humiliating ways the demons can hurt one brother if the other attacks a guard. At least if _I_ attack a guard, I ain’t got no one to hurt but me, and most days that works about as well as hurting Sam to tame Sam or Dean to tame Dean.

“Thanks,” Sam says, and that strange maybe-phantom weight disappears from my chest. He doesn’t quite smile, but for a fraction of a second I’m pretty sure his lips tick up at the corners. “I’ll owe you one.”

That’s not why I agreed, or at least, not more than half of why I agreed. Allies are important here, and the more I’ve gotten to know Sam and Dean, the more I’ve come to believe they were trying to _stop_ the apocalypse, not start it.

“The doc’ll probably come while I’m gone,” Sam adds. I nod; Dean earns too big for our demon overlords to let his injuries fester. “Tell him Dean can’t sleep without painkillers.”

“For fuck’s sake, Sammy, the wendigo didn’t rip out my vocal cords,” Dean grumbles—the first words he’s said in hours—but Sam shoots back a surprisingly vicious “Shut up, Dean,” and Dean clamps his mouth shut so hard I hear his teeth clack from two bunks away. He looks . . . _surprised_ at himself. Maybe even a little scared, like Sam _made_ him shut up somehow.

“Shit,” Sam sighs, tightening his fingers on Dean’s shoulder and scrubbing his free hand across his face. He hunches down and angles his body around to face his brother, transforming instantly from hulking sentinel to puppy-eyed little brother. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Dean, I didn’t— I just . . .”

 _I know you, you stubborn son of a bitch. You won’t ask. You’ll lie here and suffer all night before you show anybody even one small hint of weakness._ Like we somehow wouldn’t notice that he’s face-down bandaged and stitched from his right shoulder to his left hip.

Sam’s still apologizing, so Dean untucks one hand from under his pillow to pat Sam on the forearm. The movement costs; his jaw clenches and his eyes squeeze closed for a second, but still he says, soft and soothing, “It’s okay, Sammy. I get it.”

Sam’s whole body deflates, and his hand slides from Dean’s shoulder to the nape of his neck, shaking fingers brushing lightly over the short hairs there. Dean allows it—probably more for Sam’s sake than his own. This tenderness, this love and kindness and understanding isn’t for me, but I suck it all in anyway. My family’s dead. My friends are dead. Secondhand comfort is all I got left.

Eventually, Sam remembers I exist again. “You’ll tell the doc,” he urges, but all that gentleness is still in his voice, on his face, even in the way he makes that massive body look soft and non-threatening.

I nod, throat tight, though fuck-all knows why. “Yeah. I got him, I promise. You focus on the ring. Can’t have both of you out of commission at the same time.”

“I’m not ou—” Dean cuts off on a gasp like taking that breath to argue hurt him way more than he wants to admit. I catch his eye around Sam’s bulk and he’s blushing a little, or maybe feverish—could be either, could be both. He closes his eyes, clenches his jaw, frustration dripping off him like sweat. He hates being vulnerable. Can’t say I blame him, given his history here, given that face he’s been cursed with and how long it’s been since anyone in this cell has seen a woman. “Yeah, okay.” And then, “Thanks, Frankie”—the closest to an acknowledgement I’ll ever get that, tonight at least, he needs me. They both do.

My nod back is the closest to an acknowledgment I’ll ever give that being needed again means more to me than any favor the Winchesters could ever owe.


	2. Chapter 2

The door on the solid back wall of our cage swings open, and everyone but me and Sam and Dean rush for it. Must be 4pm, then. We get an hour in the high-walled courtyard each morning and afternoon, which is way less time than you’d think it is when it’s your one and only chance to see the sky and breathe some damn air that don’t stink like piss and shit and puke and too many sweaty, dirty, bloodied-up bodies. If you’re lucky, you get to soak up some sun, too, and maybe feel the grass between your toes. If you’re unlucky, it’s raining, but you stand out there and get cold and wet anyway because it’s better than being in this fucking box.

“You should go,” Sam says when the cage is empty of all but the three of us. Dean’s sleeping, I think, or faking it real good, though I have no idea why he’d bother with just us here. Sam’s hand is still resting on his neck, fingertips still stroking across his hairline. His trembling’s gotten worse; he’s starting to look as pale as his brother.

“I told you I’d watch him.”

Sam’s gaze sinks to his feet, and the sigh he heaves is so deep it lifts his chest _and_ shoulders. He doesn’t need me to tell him he’s in no shape right now to defend against a group attack. Twenty-three hours from the last dose of demon blood, he’s not healthy enough to watch his own back, let alone Dean’s. 

He sighs again, not quite so bodily this time. Takes a long look at his brother and then stands, paces to the open back door, then the locked front one. It’s the only solid steel on a wall of bars: a five foot square panel clearly designed with a bunch of lock-picking hunters in mind. There’s no way to stretch an arm around far enough to reach the lock, not even one as long as Sam’s. Doesn’t stop him from trying again, though.

When he fails again, he turns his back to the panel, leans against it, tips his head against the steel and shoves both hands through his hair. His fingers are shaking. So’s the rest of him.

“You good?”                                                                                          

Sam barks out a laugh, too short, too loud. I don’t know why I asked such a stupid question. I’m not even sure why I care, except for that I ran sometimes with his daddy back when Sam was eleven or twelve and Dean was just getting old enough and smart enough and pretty enough to work a dive bar or a truck stop better than John or I ever could. I felt sorry for those boys back then and I feel sorry for them now. Or maybe caring even when we shouldn’t is the only way we got left of fighting all this evil. Even when it might cost us. 

So I push. “He needs you to be good.” 

Sam says nothing, but his face pinches like he hurts, and it occurs to me that _good_ has more than one meaning here. Sam doesn’t like to kill. Doesn’t like the poison they shove down his throat. But he takes lives all the time, and he drinks that tainted blood. And look, sure, the kid scares me sometimes. But he’s not _evil_.

I got no idea how else to comfort the kid, and no energy for it in any case, so I’m grateful that he shoves away from the panel and stalks back to his brother. Climbs carefully into the narrow bed beside him, head to foot so there’s room . . . ish . . . for both their broad shoulders, and closes his eyes. No way he’s gonna sleep, but it’s useful to rest, at least.

Ain’t nothing better to do anyway. It’s not like they deliver the paper to our cage. Assuming the papers’re even still being printed; who knows what the world looks like out there these days.

Raucous laugher drifts in through the open back door, and Sam’s eyes pop open, head swiveling in the direction of the noise. I want to be out there under the sun with them, but I made a promise. More laughter. You wouldn’t think you’d ever find anything funny in a place like this, but the truth is that humans can and will adapt to anything. Failure to do it quick enough is the fastest way to get killed here.

Eventually the hour runs up and the bell rings, and everyone rushes back inside, bringing all that obnoxious noise with them. Getting caught in the courtyard once the bell stops ringing is bad news; if our keepers are feeling generous, they let the vampires snack on you just a little. If they aren’t, or you’ve made enough trouble in the past, or you aren’t earning your keep in the arena, they feed you to the whole zoo: the vamps drain your blood, the weres eat your heart, the kitsune grab your brain, and the ghouls polish off everything else. Sometimes, they make the rest of us watch.

People rarely dawdle in any case, because after playtime comes mealtime. Today three teenage boys are wheeling in the kitchen carts—weres maybe, who knows. Alls I know is they ain’t demons, never are. Our keepers don’t send up monsters we can fight with words alone, not after that first time we tried an exorcism.

We all sit down on the bunks against the back wall without being asked; nobody gets to eat if anyone’s near the front bars the boys slide the trays under, one at a time, until they’re lining the floor like tiles.

Once the boys are gone, we don’t rush at or fight for the trays; food’s the one good thing we got no shortage of here. Can’t starve your fighters and expect a good show, after all. The meals are usually basic, but they’re filling and they keep us healthy. And frankly, eating gives us something to do.

I notice Sam eying the trays from Dean’s bed as I reach down to grab one, so I grab two instead and bring them over to the brothers.

“Thank you,” Sam says, and he means it, like I’ve done him a real kindness instead of taking four seconds out of my oh-so-busy afternoon to help an injured man.

“What he said,” Dean adds with a little nod against his pillow. His hand crawls out to snag a slice of meatloaf that he shoves into his mouth in its entirety.

Sam scowls at him, which is kinda funny when you think about it—what on earth do manners matter here? He seems to go through some internal debate, and finally says, “How about I help you sit up?”                            

“How about you butter my damn dinner roll?” Dean counters, more or less understandable through the food he’s still chewing. My first instinct is to laugh, but my second is to fear—Sam’s . . . not as even-keel these days as he used to be, and there’s something about the kid . . .

But Sam just sighs out, “Jerk,” and picks up Dean’s roll. We only get plastic spoons, so he uses the handle to scoop the lump of butter off Dean’s tray. A second later he squints down at Dean, like he’s surprised or maybe a little alarmed, but Dean just holds up one finger and grins at Sam through his overstuffed mouth full of meatloaf, and Sam relaxes and goes back to buttering Dean’s roll.

Finally Dean swallows and uses his freed-up mouth to call his brother a bitch. For some reason Sam _laughs_ , and that’s the point at which I figure I ought to leave them to their own little bubble of crazy and go get a tray for myself.

I watch them as I eat, I don’t know why. Maybe I’m trying to get to the bottom of that pressure in my chest when Sam glares at me. Maybe I’m just soaking in the way they take care of each other; there’s twenty-four of us in here right now, and they’re the only ones with real history together. If we didn’t all live in each other’s pockets, I’m sure everyone would think the brothers were fucking—god knows there’s been plenty of rumors about Sam being possessive and that handprint on Dean’s shoulder, no matter how many times the boys say it was an angel. But as it is I just find them . . . almost sweet with each other, I guess. And not gonna lie, I get more than a little jealous. I used to have someone who loved me enough to go to actual, literal Hell for me. But I sure as shit hope that ain’t where she ended up after that demon took her for one last joyride.

When Sam’s done eating and done helping Dean eat, he picks up both their spoons in one giant hand and contemplates them like he always does. Every single day. Our jailers count them, I know they do and so does Sam. We’ve seen the shakedowns when one goes missing, the punishments when it’s found. It’s not like a single flimsy plastic prison shank would do much good against god knows how many evil sons of bitches out there anyway—not even in the hands of Sam Fucking Winchester—but the temptation never seems to leave him. I hope it never does; I’m pretty sure the day he doesn’t stop to think about it is the day both of those boys give up and die here.

And weird as it sounds, I won’t make it in here without them. I don’t know when those two boys became my hope, as bruised and battered and helpless as the rest of us as they always seem to be. But somehow, they have. And something in me’s as sure as I’ve ever been about anything that they’re not just _my_ hope anymore; they’re the entire world’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so it looks like I might be able to post every day until this is done; I'm several chapters ahead right now and still going strong. No unfinished WIP, I promise! :D


	3. Chapter 3

The kitchen boys come to clean up dinner. Then the guards come to take the night’s fighters away. Sam, of course—he or his brother or the both of them headline most fights these days unless our jailers think they’re _too_ beat up to win, which is rare—and three others along with him. Sam doesn’t struggle when they grab him by the hair, yank his head back, and pour the little vial of demon blood into his mouth. Maybe he’s far too aware of the guards standing over his brother, warning hands resting none too gently on the bandages covering last night’s wounds. Maybe he just needs the blood too much to be aware of anything else at all.                                                                             

His whole demeanor changes once he swallows. He looks taller. Ruddier. Stronger. All confidence and energy and rage. He’s stopped shaking, but when he turns to me and I catch that gleam in his eye, that streak of righteousness, of _ruthlessness_ , I nearly pick up where he left off.

“Watch him,” he warns, pointing to Dean, and then lets the guards escort him out.

I move to sit beside Dean—all the faster to run interference if needs be, though the odds are small—and the look he gives me takes some time to untangle. Despair, mostly, I think. Guilt, too. And some down-deep pain that’s got nothing to do with his clawed-up back.

“You think he’d stop drinking that shit if I were dead?”

Sam ain’t the only one with a short fuse these days; I honest-to-god want to hit Dean for letting something so stupid pass through his mouth. I don’t, though, a little because he’s already hurting enough but mostly because he’s so damn earnest. It ain’t his fault the first thing John ever taught him was how to throw his life away.

“No.”

Dean doesn’t like my answer. He nudges me away, though I can tell he wants to shove, and starts inching out of bed.

“Where you going, idiot? You’re gonna bust your stitches.”

The glare he throws me could freeze an alpha in its tracks. “I already got Sammy; I don’t need a _second_ mom.” When I just arch my brows at his slow, painful struggle to leverage to his feet, he adds, “Give me a break, Frankie, will you? I gotta piss.”

Of course he doesn’t let me help him. Of course he waited until Sam was gone so Sam couldn’t help him either—or see how bad off he really is. When he’s finally on his feet, I realize he must have cracked some ribs what with that bruising down the whole left half of his chest. He’s got a matching bruise covering half his left thigh, and four short claw marks low on his right hip with three neat black stitches in the middle of the right one.

“There were two, okay?” he grouses, like my staring has wounded his pride, like a three-quarters naked human armed only with a torch and a machete should find it easy to defeat a single wendigo.

But I feel like we’ve gotten off the much more critical point here: “You die, Sam dies. You know that, right?”

He whirls around, his murder-glare undermined by the way he loses his balance and has to grab my arm for support. He jerks away the moment he’s steady, and grounds out, “What the fuck does that mean? You threatening my brother?”

“Come on, Dean, you’re smarter than this.”

Thankfully he actually is, because he kind of slumps and turns and starts trudging toward the toilet by the back door. I follow in case he tries to face-plant again.

“I hate seeing him all hopped up on that shit,” Dean says. “I just . . .” He pauses for the thirty seconds or so it takes him to lower himself onto the toilet, one arm wrapped tight around his ribs and the other clutching white-knuckled to the neighboring sink. “Son of a _bitch_ ,” he grits out.

I know it won’t help much, but I move in front of him to block him from as much of the room as I can. Some of the guys here are real bastards—two of them aren’t even hunters, just assholes who peddled supernatural objects for profit—and they don’t need to see Dean’s weakness. He’s sweating, swearing softly, so pale his freckles look painted on. God only knows how he’s staying conscious, but then, that stubbornness is probably why he’s kept alive through so many fights.

He squints up at me through pinched brows like maybe he’s wondering why I’m standing here watching him piss sitting down, but then he says, “I, uh . . .” He pries his hand from the sink, wraps that arm around his torso too. Licks his lips, breaks eye contact for a long moment to case the rest of the room. Nobody’s at the other toilet or either sink or what passes for the showers: two heads in the wall over a pair of drains. Nobody’s bothering us. He meets my eyes again, and for a second he looks like the teenage kid I remember, too young and too scared for the job but never, ever letting that brave face slip or that fear get in the way. “To tell you the truth, I’m scared of what it’s doing to him. Sometimes I’m even—”

“Scared _of_ him?” I finish when Dean won’t.

But the kid’s no coward; he holds my gaze, nods. I can literally see the moment on his face when he decides to trust me—maybe because Sam already has, maybe because he sees something in _my_ face. Either way I plan to live up to his expectations. “Earlier today, when I . . . when he told me to shut up, I couldn’t help it. My mouth closed on its own. Nearly bit my frigging tongue.”

“So he _is_ psychic?”

Dean shrugs, winces, grunts. “I mean he used to get visions sometimes, and once he said he moved something without touching it but I didn’t ever actually see _that._ ” He pauses, finally takes that piss he worked so hard to reach the toilet for. We’re all used to doing all kinds of everything in front of people by now; he doesn’t talk through it, but otherwise it doesn’t faze him. When he’s done, he shakes off and adds, “But since he started on the demon blood, I’ve seen him exorcize demons with his mind.”

I’ve gotta ask: “Can he _read_ minds?”

“Not as far as I know.” His face clouds, brows drawing low. “But I honestly can’t be sure he’d tell me if he could. Not anymore.”

All that closeness, all that love, and there are lies between them? Bitterness, too, it seems. Hard to believe, and yet.

“How am I supposed to—” A muscle flexes in his jaw as his eyes dart to the floor and back to mine again. “I’m supposed to look out for Sammy, you know? How can I do that if he won’t talk to me?”

Christ, I am not trained for this. Besides, “Looks to me like you two talk all the time.”

“Yeah, but. That’s all . . .” He flops a hand vaguely at the cage. “Work stuff, you know? How we’re gonna get the fuck outta here. Who we’re gonna kill first. How my janky shoulder’s holding up. Nothing . . . nothing _important_ , you know?”

I think this might be more words than Dean’s said to me in the last four months combined, and frankly I have no idea what to say back. Not a one of us in this cage is exactly the sharing and caring type, Dean included. Dean _especially_. He must really be freaked.

“Anyway, help me up?” Dean holds out a hand—as sure a way as any to end an uncomfortable conversation, but because the stubborn ass has finally _asked_ for help, I’m not about to make him wait for it. Anyway, I’m just as glad as he is to be done with this talk.

I’m as gentle as I can be getting him on his feet, but he cries out and topples into me anyway. I didn’t realized how hard he was shaking until he was slumped up against me, clinging tight, but there’s nothing I can do about any of it, so I just sling his arm around my shoulder and more or less drag him back to his bunk, which he more or less collapses into.

It takes him way too long to catch his breath—where’s that damn doctor, anyway?—and by the time he’s settled down and breathing even again, he seems more asleep than not. I sit by his feet, my back to the wall and my eyes on the entire room, prepared to stay up as long as I need to. They did this for _me_ once, toward the end of my first month here when I’d stepped on the wrong toes and paid the price, but that ain’t why I’m doing it now. Or at least not all of it, even if I would rather clear my debts than not. Kinda wish I had a deck of cards, though, or even a radio. _Something_ to keep my mind off all this big fucking _nothing_. Or worse, off wondering if maybe the demons really are turning a good, brave, selfless man into a monster among us.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s late when Sam gets back. How late I don’t know—we don’t get clocks or watches and they never turn the lights off in our cage—but I’m past ready to go to sleep.

He’s come back alone, but that could mean almost anything: Maybe the other three died. Maybe they’re in the infirmary. Maybe they’re out being fucked by some monster in the audience with more money or power than sense.

I ain’t got it in me to worry about them just now, though, not with Dean lying sick behind me and Sam revved up in front of me. He’s got the beginnings of a new black eye and a split lip and a streak of dried blood from his hairline to his collarbone, but otherwise he seems fine; he’s moving easy, fast, all eyes and thoughts for his brother, who’s still as pale and sweaty as he was on his trip to the toilet, and is now also moaning and thrashing in his sleep.

“What the hell?” Sam demands—but softly, with a guilty glance at the men sleeping around us. “I told you to tell the doctor—”

He’s pissed, but he still shuts up when I hold out a placating hand. “I did. Doc ain’t allowed. Said the demons said this is what Dean gets for screwing up bad enough to take himself out of commission for so long.”

“It’s been _one day_.”

“Yeah but it’s gonna be a week at least, maybe two or three.”

Sam sits gently on the end of the bed by Dean’s feet. “So I’ll fight his matches. They won’t miss him.”

“Hey man, I’m not the one you gotta convince.”

Sam does that thing again where he somehow manages to make himself small and nonthreatening. Rakes his hands through his hair, wincing at the cut near his hairline. “I know, I’m sorry, it’s not fair to take it out on you. I’m just . . . This is _such bullshit_.”

Dean stirs, gasps as his stitches pull or maybe as those busted ribs tweak. He wakes up for half a second, mumbles “Smmy.” Sam lays a hand on the back of Dean’s calf, strokes absently.

Dean seems to shake himself awake at the touch, mumbles Sam’s name again, and this time gropes out for him, connects with Sam’s arm when Sam reaches for him in return, tugs him close. Pulls Sam’s ear right down to his lips.

I can’t hear what Dean says to him, but it sure is curious the way Sam’s expression changes. Surprise, at first. Then disbelief. Then . . . indignation maybe? Anger? I ain’t sure, but Dean’s clearly insisting on _something_. Keeps insisting until Sam says, “No, Dean. You’re in no shape—it’s too dangerous.”

“So’s staying here,” Dean says just loud enough for me to hear too. His voice cracks in the middle, all parched clay and pain, and I wish he’d shut up and go back to sleep. Sam darts a glance at me like he wishes I weren’t sitting right here listening. But he’s already trusted me with his brother, so whatever this is, it’s a smaller leap than the one he made earlier.

He doesn’t say anything to me, though. Just turns back to Dean and says, “You don’t have to. I’ll find something.”

“What?” Dean asks. “ _How_?”

This time Sam’s eyes case the entire room. Seems like everyone’s sleeping but us, but I wouldn’t swear by it, and I’m sure he doesn’t either. He looks downright cagey when he says, “Just . . . trust me, okay?”

“Two’s better than one,” Dean insists. His gaze slides to mine, and he amends, “Or three. Might take all of us to make it work.”

Sam thinks on this for a good ten seconds, and finally grits out, “Fine. But _be careful_.”

Dean nods, lets his eyes fall closed. Some of the tension eases out of his shoulders.

“You gonna fill me in?” I ask when it seems like the conversation’s ended without me.

Sam just shakes his head, and I hear-but-not-hear his voice in my head saying _Not now. Not safe_. Or maybe I’m just imagining it, interpreting the obvious nervousness on his face, because out loud all he says is, “We should get Dean on the top bunk.”

Which, sure, yeah—much safer up there, if you subscribe to the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to try to take what’s Sam’s after what happened to those first four guys. And okay, maybe they would be if they sense enough weakness, and god knows Sam’s unraveling a little at the edges lately. But Dean weighs a buck eighty at least and isn’t exactly thrilled about being moved right now. “And how do you propose we do that?”

Sam shrugs, already defeated. “I’ll take watch,” he says instead. “You sleep.”

“And if they fight you again tomorrow?”

Sam shrugs again. “I’ll sleep after breakfast, okay? You can— Shit. I’m sorry, I’m just _volunteering_ you here, aren’t I, and I didn’t even ask if you’re—”

I reach out, touch his shoulder to stop the rambling. “It’s fine, Sam. I’m with you, okay? You can count on me. You can _trust_ me.”

Sam nods and blinks real fast like maybe he’s gonna cry over that, like I’ve offered him my car or my house or my firstborn, and he looks about _twelve_ right now and I wanna kill someone, _everyone_ who put him here. I really fucking do.

And I ain’t saying it’s gonna be easy, but I also ain’t saying I deserve the look he’s giving me. Because maybe I’m helping them for the human connection I’ve been missing so much. Or maybe I’m just doing it for something, _anything_ to do. A mission. A chance to feel needed and useful again.

Or maybe I’m on board because these boys have been carrying the weight of the whole damn world for way too long, and it’s about damn time someone helps to carry them for a while.


	5. Chapter 5

Dean doesn’t wake up in the morning. I learn this because _I’m_ woken by Sam’s frantic shouts, and when I look two bunks down I see him shaking his brother way too hard for the injuries he’s got. One hand flies to Dean’s neck, checks his pulse.

Sam seems a mite less panicked after that, but only a mite, so I drag my ass out of bed and hustle over there.

Sam actually lets me near Dean, which I have to admit I wasn’t expecting. To be honest he looks grateful to see me, to pass the pressure off to someone else—or at least to someone better rested, if the bags under his good eye are any indication.

Dean’s burning up, and a quick peek beneath the blood-spotted bandages on his back makes it real clear why. Supernatural wounds have a nasty tendency to fester, and I can’t exactly imagine a wendigo’s nails being clean even if it weren’t magically evil besides.

“Jesus,” Sam murmurs when he catches sight of the red streaks of infection along the cuts. “They shouldn’t have brought him back here so soon. They should’ve kept him on antibiotics.” His fists ball up and his eyes narrow, and suddenly the air is hard to breathe, my chest feels tight and my heart’s beating way too fast. “What the _fuck_ , man. How could they be so fucking _stupid_? Are they _trying_ to kill him?”

I think about putting a hand on his arm to calm him or maybe comfort him, but something tells me I’ll get knocked across the room for my trouble. So I stand there and very carefully don’t touch him and say, “If they wanted him dead he would be, you know that.”

Sam turns with a shout and kicks the neighboring bunk bed hard enough to jar it, never mind that it’s bolted to the concrete floor. He stands there for a second, stunned, and I’m about a hundred percent sure he’s broken his foot until he squats down without a hint of pain, his back to the nearby security camera, and fingers a loosened bolt.

“Let me,” I say, because it ain’t right the way he seems to have forgotten his brother is dying on the bed behind him, and if he works that bolt free I don’t trust him not to try something angry-stupid without thinking it through.                                 

“Frankie,” Sam warns—and it’s a warning clear as day, I can feel it in my back teeth, in that weight in my chest. Even my damn balls shrivel.

But before he can say anything else, Dean gasps awake crying Sam’s name, and that’s all it takes for Sam’s focus to shift, for the hairs on my arms and neck to go back down and for the air to be breathable again.

“Get some water,” Sam barks as he stands. For a big guy, he’s crazy fast; he’s at Dean’s side in maybe half a second. Takes me a little longer to fill a paper cup at the sink and bring it back, and by the time I get there Sam’s sitting with one knee up on the bed, Dean curled around him on his good side, both hands wrapped bruise-tight around Sam’s forearm.

I give the water to Sam because it doesn’t look like Dean plans to let go of his brother anytime soon, and Sam holds it up to Dean’s lips. They’ve clearly done this more than once before, because with any other two folks there’d be a whole lot of sputtering and choking and spilling, but with these guys the water goes down smooth, not a drop out of place.

When it’s gone, Dean’s head falls heavy back to his pillow like he can’t hold it up anymore, and Sam turns to me and says, “Go get a guard, please?”

“Breakfast’ll be here soon,” I point out, because shouting for a guard for any reason, even an especially good one, is like as not to get you punished, and Dean’s not dying right this second.

Sam’s eyes narrow, and there’s that strange static heaviness in the air again. I brace myself for god knows what, expecting pain in my chest, but then Sam just nods and says, real soft like, “Yeah, okay.” Turns his focus back to Dean, who’s flushed and panting and still gripping Sam’s arm like he thinks the kid’ll fly away, and says, “Want some more water?”

Dean shakes his head, squeezes glassy eyes closed. “Nauseous,” he says. His voice is rough like he’s been screaming for hours, and I can see clear as day how it breaks Sam’s heart.

Kinda breaks mine a little too. I don’t want to see him like this, in god knows what kind of agony, weak and exposed in a demon’s jail cell. Plenty others are watching, though. Maybe they ain’t got no empathy left. Maybe they’re sitting there thinking how glad they are it ain’t them lying suffering on that bed. Or maybe they’re just bored, who knows. At least no one’s sneaking too close.

I ain’t any of those things, but I do want to be useful, and I haven’t forgotten about that bolt. Mindful of the camera, I make like I’m settling in on the floor at Dean’s bedside—ain’t no room on the bed itself, after all, with those two overgrown boys in it already. None of the cameras’ve got good line of sight on the floor between the bunks, so once I’m down there it’s easy enough to work undetected. Well, mostly undetected; I can feel Sam’s gaze on the back of my head like a literal weight, and for one paranoid second I actually think I hear him in my mind saying _Don’t fuck this up, Frankie; we need that bolt._

I agree, even though I ain’t quite sure what for yet. It’s still stuck in there pretty good, but the concrete’s crumbled a little around it, and I only have to sacrifice half a fingernail to work it loose.

Turns out the bolt’s actually a screw, maybe three inches long and a quarter inch thick. It’s sharp, too. Definitely something you could hurt a man with, but a monster? I ain’t so sure.

Still, I pass it to Sam as discreet as I can. He just sits there and holds it in his fist until the monsters of the day come to deliver our breakfast. While everyone’s watching them unload the trays, he makes it disappear. I don’t see where and I’m glad of it; if the monsters find out it’s missing, I won’t be able to point them to it no matter how persuasive they are.

Just as they’re sliding the last of the trays beneath the bars, Sam calls out, “Excuse me. Hey, we need a doctor. Please. My brother’s burning up.”

The monsters say nothing, but they do at least peer over at Sam—or rather, at Dean—to gauge the truth of the statement. Sam swears softly when they just finish up and walk away. Eats quick and mechanical when I bring him a tray, then turns all his focus back on Dean, wincing and murmuring “Hang in there” or “It’s gonna be okay” or “Help’s coming” each time Dean can’t bite back a whimper.

As it turns out, help does come: the doc, flanked by four guards, pushing a stretcher. When Sam sees it coming down the hall, he leans in close and says to Dean, so soft I nearly miss it, “I found something. It’ll work. Don’t do anything stupid, Dean; just get better, okay?”

Either Dean’s too far gone to answer, or he doesn’t like what Sam told him; he says nothing. And then the guards and the doc and the stretcher are here and he loses his chance.

We ain’t all done with breakfast yet, but they make us sit on the back bunks while they open the door to let the doc in. They only let Sam help the doc get Dean on the stretcher when the doc can’t do it himself. They cuff Dean’s ankles and wrists like they think he might be faking to try an escape—and really? Who knows. That infection’s all too real, but clearly he’s planning something anyway.

Sam sits on his bunk and seethes and no doubt thinks about that concrete screw he’s hidden somewhere, but they’ve got his brother now, and he ain’t gonna try anything risky as long as that’s true.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean’s gone for two days. The first day’s rough; the infirmary ain’t so far from the cage that you can’t hear the screaming, when it comes. And it comes on and off for way too long. I don’t doubt they’re actually helping Dean, but I also don’t doubt they ain’t numbing him before cleaning those infected wounds. Sam balls his fists and clenches his teeth and stalks the cage from one end to the other, over and over, every time it happens. You can practically feel the kid vibrating. My ears pop more than once as he plows on down the aisle. Everyone stays the fuck outa his way.

Even the monsters leave him be. They don’t fight him while Dean’s gone: a wise play, if you ask me, because either he’d be too distracted and get himself killed, or he’d be so angry he’d try to kill everyone else—inside the ring _and_ out.

My turn comes up, though, Dean’s first night out. I’m half afraid Sam’ll attack the guards who come to get me, and judging by their wary hyper-alertness, so are they. But the kid reins it in, and I go out under the hot lights and almost get eaten by a chupacabra because I’m too busy being worried about those brothers. Thank god the thing is dumber than a bag of hammers, or I’d be gone for. As it is, I squeak out with two bites on my left arm and one on my right calf.

Which I’m almost okay with when they walk me to the little infirmary after the match. The doc sits me down on the one free bed to patch me up, and there’s Dean in the bed beside me, curled up on his good side, two IV bags feeding into the back of his hand. They’ve cuffed his wrists together around the near rail, so he probably couldn’t roll over if he wanted to, though I doubt he does. He looks out cold. Good.

The doc’s as gentle as he can be cleaning those bites—he’s a prisoner here just like the rest of us—but he hurts me plenty anyway, especially when he breaks out the tweezers to fish a piece of fabric from one of the deeper tooth holes. It makes me a little sick to think all over again what Dean must’ve gone through in here. Which gets me to thinking what Dean was _planning_ to do in here, what Sam begged him not to. Sneak a weapon, maybe. Whatever the case, he won’t get a chance to decide about it cuffed to the bed. So when the doc excuses himself to grab me a blister pack of antibiotics and some antiseptic cream out of the storeroom—seems the demons learned from Dean not to be so stingy with the meds—I palm those delicate little tweezers off the treatment tray.

There’s a guard outside the open door, and another patient in the bed on Dean’s other side, but that guy looks even worse off than Dean, and the guard’s to my back, can’t really see my hands. So I slide to my feet, turn to the guard and call out, “’S’cuse me, sir, is it all right if I check on my friend here?”

The guard just shrugs like he couldn’t care less what us lowly humans do as long as we don’t make extra work for him, so I cross the few feet to Dean’s bedside and take his slack hand in mine. Even if that guard were up my ass right now, he wouldn’t notice me slipping the tweezers into Dean’s palm and curling his fingers around it.

I’m back on my own bed by the time the doc returns with my meds, and five minutes later I’m back in the cage.

Sam’s by my side in an instant when he sees the fresh bandages. Asks, “You okay, Frankie?”

“Yeah, just a few love bites. No biggie. Are _you_ okay?”

He’s not. They didn’t fight him tonight, so he didn’t get no demon blood, and it’s obvious he’s hurting bad. He’s got the shakes something awful, shoulders hunched and face drawn, and he looks like he hasn’t seen the sun in a year. He’s got a hand fisted into his stomach and doesn’t even seem to realize it’s there.

“Huh? I’m fine, don’t worry about me. Did you see Dean? Is he okay?”

I sit down on Dean’s empty bed, hoping Sam will follow suit before he falls down. “I saw him, yeah. He’s sleeping. They got him on a couple IVs.” I don’t mention the handcuffs, or the tweezers. I ain’t big on keeping secrets, but I also ain’t big on Sam Winchester’s fury.

Sam stares me down for a minute like he knows I’m hiding something, and maybe that sensation of fingers raking through my brain is all in my head (no pun intended), but maybe it ain’t. Either way, Sam lets it lie when I don’t back down. Just says, “Good night, Frankie. Thanks,” and climbs into the top bunk with an uncharacteristic lack of grace.

Morning comes far too fast. My bites throb all night, and from the looks of it, Sam got even less sleep than I did. He falls more than climbs from the top bunk when breakfast comes, and then spends the next half hour rearranging his food on his tray without actually putting any of it in his mouth.

“Oatmeal ain’t that bad,” I try, but he just glares at me, so I go back to minding my own business and leave him to his. He knows damn well how important it is to eat in here, so if he ain’t, it’s probably because he’s sure he’ll just puke it back up anyway.

Sam doesn’t go out for morning rec in the yard, and he barely touches his lunch. He sleeps from lunch until dinner. I stand guard—no afternoon rec for me either, it seems—watching him toss and sweat and moan and wondering if he’s got an infection sure as Dean does, only one that runs way deeper, right down into his soul.

Dinner comes. Dinner goes. Sam sits on Dean’s bed and stares down the hall toward the infirmary, twitching and sweating and sighing and worrying, hunching over his belly every now and then as a cramp comes too strong to ignore. He perks up, hopeful, when the guards come to collect the fighters for the night. Slumps, defeated, when they pick four other men. But just as they’re walking them out, one monster stops by Sam’s side and raises an eye-dropper to the kid’s mouth.

Sam don’t need to be told twice, or even once. He puts his head back and sticks his tongue out and lets the monster count out five drops—maybe a third of what he usually gets, but hopefully enough to ease the pain.

I know he needs it, I _know_ he does, and I know it ain’t his fault they got him hooked on that evil shit, but I still gotta look away when he swallows it down so eager and grateful and hungry, staring at the dropper like he can somehow will it to give him more.

Ten minutes later, as Sam’s cramming every leftover dinner roll I hoarded for him into his mouth, the doc comes back with Dean. He’s in a wheelchair, leaning forward a little to keep his back from touching anything, flanked by the same four guards as before. Sam’s up at the front bars calling Dean’s name before I can even get to my feet. He doesn’t step away when Dean’s little party reaches the cage door, and one of the guards bangs his nightstick against the bars right above Sam’s fingers.

That seems to snap Sam out of it; he goes to sit on the back bunks with everyone else, but his eyes stay glued to his brother as they wheel him into our cell, help him out of the wheelchair and onto the bed nearest the door.

Dean’s color is maybe a little better, and he don’t look feverish anymore, but it’s obvious moving still hurts him way too much to be dumping him back in here so soon. He’s clutching to a brown paper bag as he makes his painstaking way from chair to bed, and they leave it with him when they go.

The second the cell door’s locked, Sam rushes over to Dean’s side, and I follow a step behind.

“Dean,” Sam cries—really, seriously almost _cries_ —dropping to a crouch before Dean and putting hands all over him like he’s not sure his brother’s actually there. Makes me wonder if he started hallucinating sometime today before they brought him his few precious drops of demon blood.

“Heya Sammy,” Dean says. His voice is weak, but he’s giving Sam a soft, fond smile that would undo _anyone_ he chose to point it at. Dean cups a hand around Sam’s neck, thumb on his cheek and fingers wrapped around his too-long hair, and pats him twice. Then drops his arm like it’s too much effort to keep holding up.

“Hey, Dean.” Sam’s hands land on his brother’s biceps, holding lightly. It seems the boys ain’t got eyes for no one but each other, but then Dean turns and aims that soft, fond smile at me.

For a moment I feel like the damn Grinch, heart three sizes too big.

“Heya, Frankie,” Dean says, tired gaze sliding from my face to my bandaged forearm to my bandaged thigh. “You okay? I heard the doc patching you up last night.”

“I thought you were sleeping.”

Dean’s still smiling that soft little smile. He shakes his head. “Nah.”

Which means he was faking it. Which means he was awake when I put that tweezer in his hand.

Before I can ask him _why_ , Sam puts on what Dean would probably call Bitch Face #14 and says, “What did you do, Dean?”

Unfazed by Sam’s snit, he says, “Later, Sam.”

“Dean . . .”

“I said _later_. Did you sleep well while I was gone?”

That’s a strange question, and for a second Sam seems to think so too, eyes narrowing and head tilting a little. But then something clicks in his eyes and he says, “Yeah,” real significant-like. He takes a breath to say something else, but Dean stops him again.

“Later, okay? Now help me into my own bed, would you? And don’t lose this.” He thrusts the paper bag into Sam’s hands. “It’s got bandages and tape and a bunch of pills and some cream you need to smear on me twice a day ‘til it’s gone.”

Sam sobers at the mention of Dean’s treatment. Tucks the bag under one arm and helps Dean up with the other. Dean’s more or less moving under his own steam, but it’s slow going and his balance ain’t great. I’m more than a little concerned by how much walking seems to hurt him—and so’s Sam, judging by the scowl on his face—but they wouldn’t have sent him back here if they weren’t convinced he’d be okay, so I do my best to have some faith that maybe, for once, things’ll start looking up.

Because Dean, at least, is up to _something_ , and I for one can’t wait to figure out what.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got a nice long chapter for you today. Also, a wild Cas appears! :D

I haven’t dreamed about the outside in a long time, so it’s kind of a nice surprise to find myself sitting in a Biggersons, chowing down on steak and garlic mashed potatoes and an ice cold beer.

Until some rumpled underwear model in an ill-fitting trench coat slides into the booth across from me.

“You must be Frankie,” he says in a voice way too deep to come out of that face, all cheekbones and big eyes and wild hair.

My hands tighten around my fork and steak knife: real silverware, pointy and sharp. “Who’s asking?”

“My name is Castiel. I’m an angel of the Lord.”

No frigging way. “An angel. As in, rescued-Dean-from-Hell Castiel? _You_?”

He nods once, smiling just the tiniest bit like he expected my doubt. 

“I thought you’d be . . .”

“Taller?” he asks, that smile getting a tiny bit bigger.

I ain’t really sure what I was gonna say there anyway, so I just shrug and ask, “So what are you doing in my dream, angel of the Lord Castiel?”

“Sam and Dean have indicated to me that you’re trustworthy. They wish you to assist in their escape.”

“And lemme guess, it wasn’t safe for them to tell me this themselves.”

Castiel inclines his head. “I can reach you in your dreams, but I can’t sense where you are. The prison you’re being held in is heavily warded against heaven. We can’t find it.”

I take a bite of my steak, in part because I ain’t taking all this as in stride as I’m trying to pretend—I’m talking to an _actual angel of the Lord in a frigging trench coat_ —and in part because it tastes so damn good and I miss it. I chew, swallow, drink some beer. Castiel waits, still and patient, until I ask, “Warded how?”

“Enochian sigils.” He slides a napkin across the table with four neat symbols drawn on its face. “You must find these; it’s likely several copies of each have been painted across the compound where you’re being held. When you see them, you must deface them. Do it subtly, lest your actions be discovered. Even the smallest alteration will affect a sigil’s potency.”

I study the napkin, thinking back on where I might’ve seen the images. One in the courtyard, definitely; I thought nothing of it before because what’s a little weird graffiti in a prison full of monsters and demons? One in the infirmary, too. Definitely some in the arena.

All of which raises a bigger question. “We been locked up four months. Those sigils ain’t new. Why wait ‘til now to Freddy Krueger us?”

“I don’t understand that reference,” Cas says without missing a beat—and with only a hint of annoyance—like he cares so little about whatever I was trying to say that he don’t even _want_ an explanation. “But I assure you I came as soon as I could. Two days ago, Sam found a tool with which to deface the sigils, and used it to damage one. It was the first crack in the stronghold’s defenses; prior to now I could hear their prayers”—his face crimps for a fraction of a second, there and gone so fast I might’ve imagined it—“but not respond in any way.”

I look back up at the angel, still as a statue again in his baggy suit and ugly coat, and try to remember the last time Sam was out of my sight. I really can’t—not in the last two days, anyway. “How’d he do it?”

“He used a sharp screw to scrape thin lines in the paint. And now Dean has acquired a small blade, so you have two tools with which to work.” He has? That’s news to me, but maybe that’s what he was planning in the infirmary. “The more you alter the sigils, the less potent they’ll become, but be wary of detection. They must not know I’m coming.”

“ _I?_ As in just you? Cos no offense, but . . .”

Castiel’s whole demeanor darkens, and the way the air crackles with electricity reminds me of how Sam gets when you push him too hard. Suddenly that mussed up, puppy-eyed angel is cold and dangerous—a vengeful warrior of God like in the _Old Testament_ , and I press back in my seat, hands out in front of me.

But before I can apologize or, I dunno, get smited on the spot, all that static charge retracts and Castiel bites out, “Dean is the only one who can stop the apocalypse, but given the many battles in the wake of Samhain’s rising and our limited numbers, my superiors feel it’d be _easier_ to resurrect him from Heaven once he dies, rather than risk a direct assault on a demon stronghold.”

No wonder Castiel was so pissed. “And Sam?”

“Sam is . . . less important. But Dean will not comply with Heaven’s commands if they fail to resurrect him too.”

_Comply._ That don’t sound particularly Heavenly. No wonder Dean called angels dicks with wings every time he talked about them.

Not Castiel, though. He _likes_ Castiel. Still prays to him sometimes, even. “I take it you and Heaven don’t agree here.”

Castiel pauses a long moment, and finally says, “Heaven has not ordered me _not_ to attempt a rescue.”

“Uh huh.” Real letter-but-not-spirit-of-the-law kinda guy, I’m sensing. “You and Heaven disagree often?”

Castiel doesn’t answer, but a hint of distress creeps onto his face. “You will help them?” he asks instead.

This requires more beer. I flag down a waitress and hold up my half-empty glass. “You know I will. So what happens when we wreck the wards?”

“I’ll be able to pinpoint your location and fly into the compound.”

. . . Fly?

“I’ll bring friends of Sam and Dean’s, hunters who’ve been aiding my search since they were taken. Our presence will trip alarms. This will be your signal to fight—for all of you to fight.”

Fight. Sure. “With what? A concrete screw?”

Castiel raises an eyebrow at me in a way that suggests angels ain’t above snark. “You’re hunters. I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He glances around the Biggersons—or through it, probably, to whatever lies beyond the illusion. “I must go now. Be careful.”

And then I’m back in my narrow bunk in our over-lit cell, wishing I’d had time to finish that steak and beer.

And, oh yeah, wondering what the _fuck_ just happened.

I lie there in the quiet for a long minute—it’s probably before dawn, I hear nothing but snoring around me—just trying to process. Angels. An actual living, breathing _angel_ in my dreams. Sigils. Escape plans. The apocalypse? Like, the actual, literal biblical end of days? And how exactly is Dean Winchester—badass though he may be—supposed to stop actual, literal Satan?

I roll over to face Dean’s bunk through the bed that separates us. It’s empty tonight, like it’s been the last few nights since Sam’s gone downright scary. Dean’s curled on his good side, eyes closed beneath tightly furrowed brows. Nightmare? Pain? Both?

No . . . something’s moving under his blanket. Oh god, is he jerking off?

He bites back a moan, and I promptly close my own eyes; I do _not_ need to see this. Not that I haven’t choked the chicken a time or five since I been here, but Dean ain’t really in any shape for vigorous activity right now, and don’t need no spectators besides.

He moans again, a tight little sound caught behind clenched teeth, and my eyes pop back open. That don’t sound right—that don’t sound like pleasure. And now that I look closer, his hand ain’t moving like it should for jerkin’ the gherkin. Too far off to the right side. And is that . . . blood seeping through his blanket?

_Shit._ I roll out of bed as quiet as I can, climb into the next bunk and whisper his name.

His hand stills, and his eyes open and lock on mine. They’re wet like he’s holding back tears. _Shit and shit again._ I move to the edge of the vacant bed, lean as close to him as I can get so I can keep my voice way down. “You’re bleeding.”

“Yeah,” Dean grits out, real quiet-like.

“Lemme see.”

Dean stares at me a long moment. Seems to come to a decision and wiggles his way, slow and painstaking, to the far edge of his bed. Lifts the corner of his blanket with one hand and pats the sheet with the other. Most of his fingers are bloody.

Still, I climb in. Wouldn’t be the first time one man’s gotten into another man’s bed here, invited or otherwise. Wouldn’t even be the first time a man—okay, several men, though very much not invited—have gotten into Dean’s bed. But I know damn well that ain’t why I’m here. There’s something he don’t want the cameras to see.

He places a hand on the crown of my head, nudges me under the blankets like he’s asking me to blow him. Holds them up off me just enough to let some light in. And that’s when I see all the blood on his hip, and that two of the three sutures in the wendigo wound are missing.

“Get the last one,” he whispers to me. He produces Sam’s concrete screw from god knows where, slimy with blood, and hands it to me. It ain’t exactly an effective scissor; he squirms and grunts as I use it to saw through the last stitch. Which is good for our cover, I guess, but makes me feel like a first-class asshole, hurting him like that without even stopping to ask what I’m ripping open his wound for.

When the last stitch pops free, he moves both hands down to his hip and spreads the wound apart. Whimpers high and tight, fingers digging white-tipped into his flesh, every muscle straining. “I ca—” he pants. “I— I can’t, Frakie, help me . . .”

Those gripping fingers stay in place, keeping the wound open, and it takes me a second to realize something’s . . . _glinting_ in there. I slide my hand up his thigh to his hip, right beneath his own hands, and peer up his chest to make _absolutely sure_ : “You want me to . . .” My fingers hover over the open wound. “Inside?”

He takes a second to answer. Maybe he’s choosing his words as carefully as I did—easily mistaken for sexual if anyone’s listening in—or maybe he’s just steeling himself for the pain. Finally he licks his lips, nods. Actually quirks a strained, crooked little grin and says, “Be gentle with me, Frankie; I’m a delicate flower.”

What a little shit. But hey, he made me smile for a second, which is kind of amazing considering I’m about to put my fingers _inside_ him, and not in the fun way.

I only need one hand to do this, so I snake my other hand up to cover his mouth, just in case he starts screaming. Then I dive right in—no point in prolonging the torment—and pinch that glinting object between my thumb and forefinger.

Dean’s whole body goes ramrod straight, though he stays on his side, manages not to move his hip too much even as he keens beneath my muffling hand. It takes me several seconds to get a good grip on the thing, slippery as it is with blood, but once I do, it’s easy to pull free.

Dean’s body relaxes so abruptly that I’m sure he’s passed out, but when I emerge from under the blanket, his eyes are open, face streaked with tears. He’s panting softly, but the fucker’s _smiling_.

He balls up the bedsheet, presses the wad of cloth to his bleeding hip. “That’s thanks to you,” he whispers in my ear, the two of us close like lovers, like that scream he just muffled was orgasm and not agony. “When the doc left for the night, I picked my cuffs with the tweezers. Broke the blade off a disposable scalpel I fished out of the sharps container, snipped my sutures, stuck the blade in the open wound, and sewed it back up.”

_Jesus_. “Badass” doesn’t even _begin_ to describe this kid. Though that sure does explain why walking seemed to hurt him so much earlier; the blade was probably ripping him up from the inside with every step he took. I do have one question, though: “There was no guard in the infirmary?”

Dean shakes his head. “Nah. There were only two of us in there, and we were both pretty wrecked. The door’s locked and we were cuffed to our beds. I guess they figured a guard in the hall was good enough.”

“Lucky. So what now? You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”

Dean doesn’t really move, but somehow he conveys a shrug. “It’s almost morning. I’ll tell the breakfast fuglies I popped my stitches in my sleep and they’ll sew me back up. Oh, and hey . . .” He shuffles around a little, making the bloody scalpel blade disappear and coming back instead with a full vacutainer the size of his pinky finger, give or take. “The poor schmuck in the other bed died last night. I snagged some of his blood before Elvira and Teen Wolf could get their munch on.”

Clever boy. But . . . “Where did you hide _that_?”

Dean waggles his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Ew. Gross. “Remind me to never, ever touch that vial.”

Dean huffs a quiet laugh, puts the vial back in its hiding place and swipes a hand across his face, wiping away the remnants of those pain tears but leaving smears of blood in their place. He’s still smiling, though, like he’s real proud of himself. Good; he should be. God knows he’s earned it. “Get outta my bed, Frankie. Ain’t gonna share with someone too squeamish to show a girl a good time.”


	8. Chapter 8

I lay there not-sleeping for an hour or so after pulling that blade out of Dean’s hip. When our cellmates finally begin to stir, I ease out of bed and grab the first shower; all that blood streaked all over me is pretty damn conspicuous.

Breakfast comes about an hour after that. Dean catches the guards’ attention as they unload the trays; the wound in his hip is still leaking kinda sluggish, but both he and his bed look like a slaughterhouse floor, so there’s no question of them fetching the doc.

While he waits, he and his brother eat like they haven’t in days—two trays apiece plus the grits off a third tray for Dean—which soothes some nerves in me. We huddle close over breakfast—half the room probably thinks me and Dean’re fucking now, and the other half still believes Sam and Dean are fucking, so we ain’t worried about looking weird being together so much—and swap intel. I tell the boys about my dream with Castiel. Dean tells Sam about the scalpel blade and the dead man’s blood. Sam’s pissed—at both of us—but reluctantly impressed. He tells us about the first sigil he scraped in the courtyard the day he got the screw, how he was so damn relieved to see Castiel in his dreams that night that _Listen, guys, I’m not too proud to say I almost cried_. We swap suspected locations for the rest of the sigils and strategize ways to disrupt them without getting noticed. We should be able to tag at least one today, in the infirmary when they take Dean back for his stitches.

I’m feeling pretty damn good about, well, kind of _everything_ for the first time in forever. It ain’t outside the realm of possibility that two or three days from now, we’ll all be free and every one of these evil sons of bitches will be dead.

But that things-looking-up feeling fades when the doc comes to the cell with his kit instead of a wheelchair or a stretcher. Dean can’t deface the sigil in the infirmary if they won’t take him back there. And if they won’t take him back there for _this_ bloody mess, then they won’t take him back there for anything we’d be willing to do to him—or let him do to himself—either.

The guards lock the doc in the cage and then open the back door to the yard. It’s raining, but just about everyone files out anyway. At least it’s warm wherever we are. Sam stays back to hold Dean’s hand—well, to loom threateningly over the doctor, more like—but I go out and case the courtyard for sigils we might’ve missed.

I don’t find any. Wasn’t expecting to, really, but after the morning’s blow, it darkens my mood like the storm clouds overhead. Lightning strikes somewhere close enough to flood the air with ozone; it makes me think of Castiel.

I wander back in long before our hour’s up, soaked through like a drowned rat. Since there ain’t no line right now, I hop under the shower for a minute to warm up, clothes and all—if the gladiator loincloths they keep us in can even be counted as clothes—then wring it out and hang it to dry over the side of my bunk. We each have our own towel, but as small as it is, I hang that to dry too and jaybird my way over to Sam and Dean, instead.

Dean’s slumped back on his good side, sheet and blanket pulled up to his chin, all pale skin and big bruised eyes and freckles. He looks exhausted. Didn’t hear him shouting out in the yard, but that don’t mean much; the kid dug a scalpel out of his own leg yesterday without barely making a sound.

Sam’s sitting next to him, hand resting on his shoulder over the covers. There’s that smell of ozone again, but this time I don’t think it’s Castiel _or_ the storm.

“He all right?” I ask.

“He can talk for himself,” Dean gripes—like I said, pain makes him cranky—at the same time Sam says, “No, he’s not. And who’s fault is that, Frankie, huh?”

Sam rises to his very, very, _very_ full height, and I stumble back right onto the vacant bunk behind me. Look up. Up some more, fear rabbiting in my chest just like it did in my dream last night when Castiel got pissed.

“Sam, wait. I didn’t know what he was gonna do, okay?”

Sam’s chest heaves, eyes dark and fists balling, but he holds himself real still, like maybe he’s trying to convince himself he can’t kill me ‘til he don’t need me anymore.

I ain’t sure he’s gonna win that debate.

But then Dean’s hand snakes around Sam’s wrist and tugs. “Hey, come on, Sam. Like I said, two’s better than one. Besides, I’m in my big boy pants now; I get to make my own decisions. Frankie didn’t do jack.”

At that Sam rounds on Dean, ripping his wrist from Dean’s grip, and Dean flinches bodily like he’s been pushed.

Which hurts him, of course, which—thank god, because honestly I wasn’t sure—snaps Sam out of his fury; the kid drops to his knees beside the bed and babbles “Oh my god Dean I’m so sorry I didn’t mean— I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just wound up so tight in here, you know? And I worry about you, and what you did was fucking stupid and reckless and I can’t . . .” He shoves both hands through his hair, then grips Dean’s arm through the blankets. “I can’t keep watching you get hurt, Dean. I _can’t_. What if you don’t—”

I’m getting whiplash the way Sam keeps going from Dark and Furious to Sad Puppy, but I’m grateful to Dean for flipping that switch in the kid, seeing as Dark and Furious was aimed at me this time around. Dean pokes a hand out from the blankets, pats Sam’s arm. “I ain’t dead, Sammy. And this . . .” He waves at himself, at his injuries. “This ain’t nothing. I’ve had way worse, okay?”

Yeah, like actual, literal Hell, I bet. Sam’s thinking the same thing by the way his brows crease and his mouth pinches, and suddenly Dean’s looking an awful lot like a man who just realized he said something he shouldn’t have.

“You know . . . Yellow Eyes ripping me up. _Two_ gunshot wounds to the same damn shoulder.” He kind of shrugs beneath the blankets like he ain’t fooling no one and he knows it, though I got no idea why he doesn’t just come out and say _Hell_. “Anyway,” Dean says. “Naptime. Cos this face?” He circles a finger in front of his head, puts on a tired little model pout. “Needs its beauty rest.”

And then he holds up his blanket and pats the mattress and says, “Come on, Frankie. Cuddle me to sleep.”

Sam looks appropriately scandalized for a second, then just kind of shrugs and wanders over to the toilets to take a piss. I climb into bed with Dean, on my side facing him, careful as I can be not to jostle him too much. When I’m under the covers, he takes my hand in his, pulls it down near his crotch, and passes me the scalpel blade. “Since I can’t really do it myself right now,” he says with a wink.

Two can play at that game. “Oh yeah? And just where’m I supposed to _put_ this?”

Dean shifts his head on his pillow until his mouth’s right up next to my ear, and whispers, “Work it into the seam of your loincloth. S’too small to find on a patdown, and you’ll have it with you when you need it. Now pretend-jack me off and get outta here; I really do need a nap.”

Crazy as it sounds, I gotta stifle a damn laugh. Fortunately, I got two hands, so I manage to stow the blade while following his orders, and Dean fake-comes maybe a minute later. He gives me a peck on the cheek before shooing me out of his bed, and I paste on my best _hey-it-was-my-turn-now-you-selfish-asshole_ outraged face as I go.

I realize we’re not alone anymore as I return to my own bunk; a handful of guys have come back early from morning rec, and they’re smirking at me in a way I can’t quite figure: maybe they think it’s funny that I’m wrapped around Dean’s finger, or maybe they think I’m lucky to be the one to have finally pried those legs apart without getting dismembered by Sam.

Either way, I don’t want the attention, so I snap, “Fuck off,” and am more than a little surprised when they just . . . do.

Then the bell rings, and everyone else comes rushing back in from the courtyard, shivering and dripping puddles on the floor and jostling for the showers. I use the chaos to pace the cell, every last inch of it, searching floor to ceiling for a sigil we might’ve missed. Sam shakes his head once as I walk by him— _I’ve already done this, Frankie; there’s nothing here, don’t draw attention_ —but I gotta see for myself, and I been hunting since he was in diapers; I know how to case a place inconspicuous-like.

Turns out I find nothing, but I had to try.

Dean sleeps almost all day, which is probably for the best, both because he desperately needs the rest and because he definitely does _not_ need to watch Sam getting more and more jittery as the demon blood wears off. Unfortunately, he is awake when the guards come in to fetch the night’s fighters. It’s Sam’s turn tonight, and of course before they take him, they give him his hit.

This could be good for us, though, and Dean knows it. Sam’ll pass at least one sigil in the halls on the way to the ring, and at least one more in the ring. Question is, will he have a chance to get at them without being seen?

Dean and I change each other’s bandages while we wait for Sam to come back, then settle in to a game of music trivia. It’s good to see Dean sitting up on his own steam, staying awake for more than ten minutes at a stretch. We ain’t got no way to double-check each other, so we spend more time arguing than answering questions, but either way it passes the evening.

In the middle of a rousing debate about whether “Blaze of Glory” hit #1 on the Billboard charts in 1990 or 1991, an asshole named Jackson—one of those in-it-for-himself bastards who ditched hunting to peddle supernatural objects until he stepped on the wrong toes—comes by real casual-like, drops down beside Dean on his cot, and lays a hand on Dean’s thigh.

Dean goes real still, but it ain’t fear; it’s _danger_.

“So,” Jackson says, looking straight at me like he don’t sense Dean gearing up beside him to break every bone in his body. “Prettyboy here finally open for business again?”

_Again_ , as if he’d actually given his consent the last time. Fury and danger’s building up in me just as sure as it is in Dean, but I follow his lead and don’t move except to shrug and say, “Ain’t up to me.”

Jackson’s hand slides a little further up Dean’s thigh. “You sure about— _Aah!_ ”

To be honest, I couldn’t even track what happened. Alls I know is Dean hasn’t moved, not really, but somehow Jackson screamed and hit the floor, his wrist trapped in Dean’s hand and something in his arm snapping loud enough to be heard over his cry.

“Motherfucker!” he shouts. “Let go of me!”

Dean does, but only so he can plant his foot in Jackson’s belly and shove him away. Then he turns back to me, calm as can be, and says, “I’m telling you, Frankie, it was _1990_.”

_Everyone’s_ watching. Which, good, let them see just how well Dean can take care of himself, even beat to hell and back. The only real downside here is a few seconds later two guards come pounding down the hallway and skid to a stop in front of our cage.

“That fucker broke my arm!” Jackson shouts at them, pointing furiously at Dean from his huddle on the floor.

Dean holds both hands up, pastes on a charming smile. “Self-defense,” he says.

The guards clearly don’t care; alls they know is Dean knocked another fighter out of commission. They call for backup, and when the next pair of guards arrive, they herd us all against the back wall. One of them looks first to Jackson, then to Dean, then says, “You two can come out on your own, or you can make us come in there and get you.” 

Dean just keeps smiling that charming smile as he levers himself to his feet. I rush to help him, in part because it gives me a chance to slip the scalpel blade into his loincloth—god knows where he’s going, and what sigils he might find there—and in part because he just really needs the help. He meets my eyes, gives me a barely perceptible head shake. I get it, I do; there’s no telling what they’ll do to him even if they _don’t_ find a weapon on him, and the odds of him getting a chance to use it are slim to none right now anyway. So I just help him to the door, then go sit down on my bunk as they open up the cage and march him and Jackson away.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got a nice long chapter for you guys to make up for the two-day wait :)

Dean don’t come back that night, and neither does Sam. (Neither does Jackson, but I ain’t got two shits to give about that fucker.) They don’t come back the next night, either, but I do get a dream-visit from Castiel, who’s maybe even more frantic than I am over the brothers’ fate. “Frantic” being a relative term with him, of course—there’s worry etched deep in that marble-statue face as he asks me if I’ve heard from them at all.

“You haven’t?” We’re back at that same Biggersons again, but I don’t have it in me to eat my food; my stomach’s off with worry. I am _definitely_ drinking the beer, though.

“Wherever they’ve been taken, I can barely sense them; the warding must be thick there. But I’ve heard . . .” He looks off to the side, jaw clenching tight. “Fragments of their prayers.” He turns back to me, power and helplessness crackling side by side in those too-blue eyes. “They’ve been praying often. I am . . . uncertain of what to do.”

Yeah, me too, buddy. “I haven’t found any new sigils to scratch.” I hold up my forearm, still stitched and bandaged. “They won’t fight me ‘til this heals a bit. Couple more days, maybe? But until then I’m stuck in that damn box.”

Castiel inclines his head in acknowledgment. “Sam defaced three sigils yesterday. I can feel the difference, but it’s not enough. Several yet remain. You _must_ find a way—”

“ _How_?” I don’t mean to shout—and frankly I’m kinda fearing for my life before the word’s even out of my mouth—but Castiel just . . . deflates like a sad lost balloon.

“Apologies,” he says. “I know you’re in an untenable position. I just . . . their prayers grow increasingly desperate and I . . .”

“I get it, man. I’m worried too. But you said . . . I mean, if they die, your pals up in Heaven can bring them back, right?”

Clearly that wasn’t the right thing to say, because Castiel goes all stiff and serious and smitey. But then he just sags in that oversized trench coat again and says, surprisingly soft, “It’s not their _deaths_ that I—or they—fear right now.”

Yeah. Ain’t that the truth.

“Besides, that path would leave your captors free and many other hunters imprisoned, including you.”

“Yeah, well, I’d be lying if I said that thought hadn’t occurred to me.”

Castel doesn’t reply, just sits there contemplating the cosmos or whatever it is that angels do, until I get uncomfortable enough to pick up my beer and take a nice long pull. The silence don’t seem to bother Castiel, but it bothers me, and I got something else on my mind besides, so I ask, “Tell me, angel of the Lord. Is it a sin that I want to kill Jackson?”

Castiel’s face cracks just the slightest bit with what might be the beginnings of a smile, or maybe a smirk. “He is . . . not a good man,” he finally says.

I’m about to ask if that’s a yes or a no when Castiel sits up real straight, eyes darting all around the Biggersons. “I’m about to be discovered,” he says. “I must go.” And he poofs outta there just like that, without another word.

I wake up flailing in my bunk. It takes me a second to remember where I am, and when I do the weight of it all comes crashing heavy down on my soul. It’s been _days_ since we started trying to bring down the warding, and all we’ve got to show for it is four altered sigils. I’m stuck in a damn cage, and my friends are both god knows where being subjected to god knows what fate worse than death for god knows how long. Even Castiel Angel of the Lord is at loose ends. I just . . . I’m having a hard time seeing a way forward right now.

I’m still feeling that way the next day, too, right up until the second I hear a whole bunch of footsteps in the hall and realize they’re bringing Sam and Dean back. Under their own steam, even.

Everyone’s watching them as we herd up against the back wall so the guards can open the cell door and shove them through. Dean stumbles but catches himself; Sam stumbles and falls. Dean and I rush over to him at the same time, but Dean’s closer and beats me to it. By the time I get there, Sam’s back on his feet, leaning on Dean’s arm as Dean says over and over _I’m so sorry, Sammy, Jesus, this is all my fault, I’m so sorry._

“Need a hand?” I ask, because after going through whatever they surely just went through, I ain’t touching either of them without their express permission.

“We’re good, thanks, Frankie,” Sam says, and the two of them start shuffling over to their bunks, holding each other up.

I follow a step behind, just in case someone passes out along the way. Sit down on the empty bunk across from them and ask, “You need some time? Cos I can piss off.”

“Nah,” Dean says as Sam shakes his head. “We’re okay, Frankie.”

I give them both a good once-over. Our outfits leave a lot of skin showing, and even I have to admit I don’t see a ton of new cuts or bruises on Dean. In fact, he seems to be in no more pain now than when he left. Sam’s a little more beaten up, but that might’ve happened in the arena. Still, there’s plenty of ways to hurt a man that don’t leave marks, so I can’t help but ask, “Are you really? I mean, you been gone _two days_.”

Dean’s gaze sort of slides to the floor as he strokes his thumb over the side of his index finger a few times, a gesture of self-soothing or maybe contemplation. Sam, on the other hand, just looks to his brother like he’s relying on Dean to tell him how to answer that question. “Yeah, Frankie,” Dean finally says. “Really.”

“And Jackson? We gotta worry about him?”

Dean’s mood seems to lift a little at that; he sits up a bit straighter, looks me in the eye again. “He’s in the infirmary. Needed three pins in his elbow. He won’t be coming back anytime soon, and he sure as shit won’t be messing with us when he does. Didn’t really have any friends in here, either.”

I nod, relieved. Take a long look around the room. Most everyone’s gone back to whatever ways of passing the time they were engaged in before the brothers’ return. Maybe they’ve learned their lesson about mistaking Dean for entertainment. Good.

I lean forward, as close as I can without getting in their faces. They’ll either close the distance or they won’t, and sure I’m impatient to talk with them about this sigil business, but I ain’t an insensitive jerk, so.

They don’t move. That’s okay. “We’ll talk later,” I say, leaning back and trying to put my best soothing face on. “If you need anything, anything at all, you tell me.”

“Thanks, Frankie,” Sam says through a tired smile. “Some water would be great. Food, too, if you’ve got any.”

“A bacon cheeseburger,” Dean says. “And pie. Like, three of them, preferably all baked into a layer cake.”

God, I wish. “I got two granola bars and an apple.”

“Fuck apples anyway,” Dean sighs, but when I bring it over he takes a huge, unhesitating bite before passing the rest of it to Sam.

I leave them to their snack and their shared trauma, and lie down on my bunk and try not to think too hard about just what exactly that trauma must’ve entailed. Of course, that only really leaves me the warding to think about—all those sigils we ain’t been able to get to and probably won’t in future, either—and that’s even _more_ depressing.

So I lie there in my funk, and they sit there in theirs, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but that’s how the next few days go by. Each night we watch them pick four other men to fight, and each night that despair in our chests grows bigger.

At least they bring Sam a few drops of demon blood each night. At least we don’t have to deal with the whole withdrawal nightmare on top of everything else.

I kinda lose track of the days a bit—it ain’t so uncommon in here, what with no real way to mark the passage of time—but it occurs to me one morning over breakfast that I’m pretty sure it’s been a week since they fought any of us last. We’re all patching up pretty good—even Dean’s deep wendigo wounds have healed well enough for the stitches to come out. I don’t know how he does it, but that kid heals like Wolverine. They both do.

I take my tray over to the boys’ bunkbed, where they’re seated on the bottom bunk working through their second or maybe third helpings of cream of wheat and powdered eggs. Dean scoots over to make room for me between them, and when I sit, he leans in close, keeping up the lovers pretext. Well, at least he ain’t touch-averse no more.

I bump his shoulder with mine and offer him a hopeful smile. Sam’s kind of third-wheeling it on my other side, but he’s close enough to hear me whisper, and that’s all that matters. “Listen. It’s been way too long; they’re probably gonna fight one of us tonight. We should be ready.”

The brothers nod in synch. _Win_ synch. Heh.

Jesus, I’m going nuts in here.

“I’m stuck with the safety scissors right now,” Dean says through a mouthful of eggs. In other words: there’s three of us, but only two sharp tools.

“Doesn’t matter,” Sam says. Unlike his brother, he swallows before he talks. “I already got the two in the halls to the ring, and the one in the ring itself. If there are more on that route, I haven’t seen them.”

“Me neither,” Dean and I say at the same time.

. . . _Frean_ synch?

Yep, definitely going nuts.

“There’s still the one in the infirmary,” Sam offers.

“A,” Dean says, “they keep not taking us there, and B, even if they did, and even if we could get to the sigil around the doc and the guards, I doubt it’d be enough.”

Sam scowls, and Dean frowns and shovels some more eggs into his mouth, leaving me to point out the ugly-but-obvious: “Which means we gotta get taken to some places we haven’t been.”

“Mm-hmm,” Dean hums through his eggs. Sam says nothing, just keeps scowling.

Really? They’re gonna make _me_ say it? “And we all know there’s only one other place they take us—at least, unless we’re what’s for dinner: after-show entertainment.”

Dean finally swallows those eggs. He sounds entirely too even-keel when he says, “Ayup,” making the _p_ pop hard at the end.

“I dunno about you boys, but I made it real clear right from the start that if they put me in a room with a customer trying to get into my loincloth, they’d have a very _dead_ customer.”

Dean’s playful-casual air falls away so fast I find myself jerking back from the steel in his eyes. “You think I didn’t say the same, Frankie? Think Sam didn’t _show_ them how true that is?”

Okay, hit a nerve there. Can’t say I blame him, though. I put up a placating hand cos the kid’s still all scowling fury. “That wasn’t what I— What I _meant_ was that if we offer _now_ , don’t you think they’re gonna be a little suspicious?”

Dean’s scowling fury turns to scowling shame; he says to the tray in his lap, “Come on, Frankie. Haven’t you heard I’m finally open for business again?”

“No,” Sam says. Fuck _says_ ; the kid _growls_. “Absolutely fucking not, Dean. Not again.”

He glares up at Sam. “So who, then? _You_? Frankie? At least I’ve—” He goes pink to the tips of his ears, turns his gaze back to his tray again. “Those guys you killed? They weren’t the first and you know damn well they weren’t the last. No one’ll be suspicious if it’s me; the demons’ll just figure I got used to it.”

Sam looks fucking _horrified_. My breakfast churns my stomach like a clenching fist; is _that_ what they did to Dean those two days he was gone? In front of Sam, no less?

Dean holds his brother’s gaze, even as Sam keeps trying to look away. “I can handle it, okay?”

“Dean—”

“Besides,” Dean says like Sam hadn’t even spoken. He cocks a smile so thin it’s straight-up see-through and adds, “I’m the one who’ll fetch the big bucks for our demon overlords.” He waves at himself, face to crotch. “I mean, _look_ at me.”

Well, he ain’t wrong about that one.

“Dean,” Sam says, more forceful this time. He does one of those bodily sighs again, slides his tray off his lap and onto the bed so he can turn more fully to face us both. “Look, who even says they’re gonna fight you tonight? What if they take me? Or Frankie? Are we just supposed to wait another day? Another two days? More? Because every second we sit here hoping they’ll pick you tonight is one more chance for some asshole to get us into trouble again!”

“Shhh!” Dean hisses, reaching around me to smack Sam’s chest. Not that Sam was yelling, or really even talking loud, but whisper-shouts do carry.

Sam looks properly chastised. “Sorry,” he whisper-whispers. “I just. Look, can we at least agree that if we’re gonna do this, then putting it off is a terrible idea?”

“Yes,” I say without hesitating. But it takes Dean a good five seconds to concede to a nod. He knows where this is going; if he agrees we shouldn’t wait, then he also needs to agree to let whoever gets picked tonight volunteer to grab their ankles for a monster.

“And it won’t look suspicious for _any_ of us. We’ll just tell them we’re going insane in here and want in on the perks the other guys get. That bacon cheeseburger. Some pie. A deck of cards, for fuck’s sake.”

“True,” Dean says, drawing out the word to at least four syllables, like he’s thinking it through as he speaks.

“So it’s agreed then. Whoever they fight tonight makes the move. Right, Dean?”

“I’m in,” I say when Dean just scowls again.

This time it’s Sam’s turn to reach over me to smack his brother in the chest. “ _Right_ , Dean?”

“Fine,” Dean spits out. “But on one condition. Whoever they _don’t_ fight’s gotta get into the infirmary and get that one too—whatever it takes. Cos if I gotta go through with this—or, god help me, if I gotta think about _you_ going through with this, then we’re getting the fuck outta here _tonight_.”

Sam whips out what I’m pretty sure is Bitch Face #7, then takes a deep breath like he’s about to argue a whole hell of a lot. But then he just shuts his mouth with a little clack and sighs out all that air and says, “Fine.” Looks to me and asks, “You in, Frankie?”

God. Freedom. Maybe even _tonight_. Even knowing what it’s gonna cost two of the three of us, I can’t help breaking into a grin. “Damn straight, Sammy-boy.”

“Don’t call him that,” Dean says through a grin of his own at the same time Sam says, “Nobody gets to call me Sammy but him.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Everyone to the back,” the guards call out. It’s after dinner and there’s four of them, so odds are good they’re here to pick the night’s fighters. We all shuffle like obedient—or more like beaten—dogs to the back bunks and sit down to wait and see if our number’s up.

I can’t decide if I’m hoping or dreading that they’ll pick me. Though on second thought, I ain’t sure those two feelings have got to be mutually exclusive. Because on the one hand, those boys’ve been through enough, and from the way Castiel makes it sound, Dean’s still got a whole frigging _biblical apocalypse_ to stop. But on the other hand . . . monster rape. And that’s one thing in here I’ve so far managed to avoid; I ain’t never done nothing like that with another guy. Don’t ever want to, neither.

Me and Sam and Dean are all sitting on the same bunk, and I think it’s safe to say ain’t none of us surprised when two guards head straight our way. I can see how bad both boys want to stand and put their own fool self in front of their brother, but they ain’t about to break the rules when we’re _this close_ to maybe getting out of here.

I ain’t ashamed to admit the way my stomach flip-flops and my heart double-times it when one of the guards points right to me and says, “You. Up.”

I don’t turn to look at Dean or Sam as I stand—call me a coward but I can’t see their faces right now, I just can’t. I nearly jump out of my skin when a hand lands on my hip, right over where the scalpel blade’s hidden away in the seam of my loincloth, but it’s just Dean. “Be safe, Frankie,” he says, and he can get away with both the touch and the concern because apparently we’re lovers now, but I know what he’s _really_ saying is _You don’t have to do this; we can wait until I’m up_.

I’m in the process of framing some clever way to say _Fuck that, I said I’d do this and I’m doing this_ when the guard who pointed at me says, “You can keep him safe yourself, pretty. _You’re_ up too.”

“No!” Sam cries, standing from the bed and taking a single small step in front of Dean.

That’s all it takes for the second guard to slam the butt of his nightstick into Sam’s stomach, then drive it across his back when he doubles over.

“Hey! That’s enough, you son of a bitch!” Dean shouts, shooting to his feet but not moving toward Sam _or_ the guards; he knows damn well it’d only make them beat Sam harder.

Sam’s on the ground on his knees, one hand pressed to his middle, but he holds up the other in placation or maybe an attempt to convince. “It’s okay, Dean.” He throws puppy eyes up at the guards and says, “Look, take me instead, okay? I’ll fight tonight. I want to fight. Please.”

The guard’s answer is the same as before, except this time the nightstick cracks across the side of his face. I hear Dean shouting “ _Stop it_!” over Sam’s cry, and I’m sure it takes every last drop of Dean’s frankly remarkable self-control to keep his feet planted when Sam spins around with the force of the blow, face-plants on the concrete floor, and doesn’t move.

Dean looks as wrecked as I’ve ever seen him. “You gotta hurt someone, hurt me,” he demands. His lips quiver and his eyes shine with wetness. “But please, he needs a doctor. I’ll fight, okay? But he needs a doctor.”

Which is when it finally occurs to me—and okay, I admit it, I ain’t always the quickest bunny in the forest—that maybe Sam’s faking, and Dean knows it. Maybe he planned this—maybe on the fly right after the first time they hit him, or maybe from the moment they picked Dean. Because _someone’s_ got to get to the infirmary, after all, and he’s the only one left to try.

The guard kind of rolls his eyes at Dean, but then he’s on his walkie calling for a stretcher, and that’s all it takes for Dean—and me right behind him—to follow the guards quietly out of the cage. The other two picks for tonight’s Fight Club are already waiting out there with their guards, and once we’re all together they flank us deceptively casual-like and march us down the hall, then through a door and into another hall that leads to the locker room behind the ring.

We won’t know what order we’re fighting in or what weapons we’re getting or what we’re facing until they throw us out there, so there’s nothing much to do but wait. Wait, and try not to think too hard about what’s gonna happen after the fight if we live that long.

So of course Dean picks that moment to approach the guard at the door. And since I know damn well he’s gonna offer himself up, I rush my stupid ass over there to cut him off at the pass. I don’t quite get there ahead of him, but I do manage to shove him behind me before he can open his mouth. I’m sure he’s fuming back there, but I ain’t got no fucks to give when it means I’m—literally—saving his ass.

“Frankie—” Dean warns, but I just shove him back again.

“So listen,” I say to the guards before Dean can talk again. I got a whole lotta practice looking cool when I’m terrified, but this right here’s harder than most any moment I ever faced on a hunt. Still, it’s too important to blow, so I swallow hard and push through. “I know I said I wasn’t down with the whole after-hours meet-up thing, but I changed my mind. I’m going nuts in that cage; I want a deck of cards and a couple’a mystery novels and a good deep-dish pizza and I’m all yours. Or, you know, whoever’s.”

The guard gives me a leering, sneering once-over. “And what makes you think anyone’s gonna want _you_ , old man?”

_Old_? I’m only forty-eight, for fuck’s sake. And I may not have Dean’s face or Sam’s body, but it ain’t like I let myself go or something; I’ve never had no shortage of eager women to entertain. But that ain’t what the guard wants to hear. What he _wants_ to hear is, “You want me to show you just how worth it I am?”

“Frankie . . .” Dean says again from behind me, much softer this time, full of concern.

But the guard just shakes his head. “Wouldn’t wanna piss off your boyfriend; he might stop giving it up for me.”

“You ain’t special,” Dean says to the guard, managing to elbow his way out from behind me while I’m too busy being horrified at the idea that this guard standing right here in front of us actually raped Dean. Dean gives the fucker his cheekiest smile and says, “In fact, you tell your bosses I’ll give it up for anyone tonight as long as they get me a bacon cheeseburger and some pie.”

“Dean!” Because apparently now it’s my turn to protest. “I already—”

“But I mean a whole pie, big and fresh, you got me? Scratch-made—none of that fake crap. Cherry. With whipped cream.” He turns to me, then. “You didn’t ask for presents for me, Frankie, so I gotta get em myself, okay?” He leans in, pecks me on the cheek. Then turns it into something more, nuzzling along my jaw until he reaches my ear and whispers, quiet as he can, “Insurance. Two’s better than one, remember?” I try to nuzzle back so I can whisper in _his_ ear that he ain’t got no tool to wreck the sigils with, but he pulls back too fast. Then he says, loud enough for the room to hear, “Don’t be jealous, babe.”

But god knows the kid’s nothing if not industrious; maybe he _can_ find a way to wreck a sigil without a blade or a screw. So I guess I can’t be _too_ angry. After all, what if they take us to two different parts of the compound? What if we can actually get two sigils instead of one? He don’t seem too traumatized about all this anyway—or so I tell myself, because that beats admitting he’s a world-class actor-slash-liar-slash-repressor who just volunteered for a situation that’s gonna fuck him up ten times worse than he already is.

To my surprise, the guard actually radios our requests to whoever it is that handles this side of things. He listens quietly for a bit, nods a few times to himself, says, “Understood” into his mic. Then turns to me and says, “You get _one_ book, assuming anyone actually asks for you. Both your other requests are approved as long as you make your client happy.”

_Gross._ But, hey, if this doesn’t do the trick and we’re still stuck in here after tonight, at least we’ll be well fed and entertained, I guess?

Dean’s making a face like he’s giving himself the exact same shitty pep talk I just gave myself.

We get a lot of time to think on it all, too, because the first and second matches go to the other two fighters. One comes back covered in blood that don’t seem to be his own, which, good on him. The other one don’t come back at all; either he’s dead or he’s grabbing ankles for a monster, and I ain’t sure which one to wish on him.

The guard walking up to me means I’m up next, which makes sense—of _course_ Dean’s triumphant return to the arena would be the night’s finale fight. But when I stand to follow the guard out of the locker room, he nods toward Dean and says, “You too, pretty. You and loverboy are pairing up tonight.”

Dean stands, face so carefully blank I ain’t got no idea how he feels about this. It’ll be our first time fighting together, but hunters don’t get to be as old as I am by being stupid, so he’s got that much to trust, at least. Knowing Dean, he’s thrilled to be out there with me because it means he can protect me. I’m glad of it for the same exact reason: it means I can protect _him_. I’m more or less fully healed, but Dean’s still guarding those busted ribs on his left flank.

The guard herds us both through the locker room door and into the short hallway to the arena. There another guard passes us each a double-edged silver knife about ten inches long. That don’t narrow things down much, though; silver’s deadly to a whole lotta supernatural baddies.

“Ladieeeees and gentlemeeeeen!” the announcer calls over the speaker system as the guard shoves us out into the arena proper. “Our headline fight tonight is a _truly_ special event: the incomparable Dean Winchester, gone to Hell and back again, champion of the Heavenly Host, forty-six time undefeated victor in this very arena, is fighting tonight for the first time since his by-the-skin-of-his-back win against mated wendigos! And for added suspense, joining him here is his secret lover, Frankie Donahue, a twenty-one time undefeated fighter in our ring!”

Secret lovers, huh? _That_ rumor didn’t take long to spread. And Dean plays right into it, taking my free hand in his and bringing it to his lips to kiss my knuckles. Insurance, I bet: if we don’t get outta here tonight, he wants them to keep fighting us in pairs, and that only works if the crowd believes we love each other.

The door on the other side of the arena opens, and instantly Dean and I drop into ready stances, shoulder to shoulder, waiting to see what comes out.

I can _feel_ his unease through the spot where our shoulders touch when a pair of . . . humans? . . . races out the other door.

Nah man, that ain’t right. They ain’t never put us up against our own kind. Fact is, it’s rare for us to fight anything sentient at all, which means these goons must be monsters gone wrong—pissed off or disobeyed the wrong demon and now gotta fight their way to forgiveness. Or death, if Dean and I get any say in it.

The two of us advance toward the baddies—shapeshifters? weres? skinwalkers? Wouldn’t do to have our backs against a literal wall. When we’re all maybe five feet apart, the baddies finally bare some fang, and Dean says “Werewolves” at the same time I do.

Purebloods too, or close to it, seeing as how they made a controlled partial shift, teeth and claws flashing deadly but minds still human enough to think sharp.

Even so, this fight would normally be evenly matched, if not a little in our favor. Because have I mentioned what a badass Dean is? And I ain’t so shabby myself, and we got lethal weapons firm in our hands, even if the blades are short enough to make us get in close.

But Dean’s injured and the weres can probably _smell_ it, cos they lunge right in toward his left side.

So needless to say, the fight gets messy. And it runs long, which wears hard on us all, but on Dean the most—his stamina ain’t what it should be after all the hits he’s taken the past couple weeks. The crowd goes wild with every volley and so do the weres, who fight clean enough to be trained, _and_ have werewolf strength and speed besides. I ain’t ashamed to say we both get our asses kicked. Dean takes a hit to the ribs so hard he goes down in a huddle and can’t get up . . . or so it seems right until one werewolf puts that to the test and gets stabbed in the heart for his trouble. The thing claws up Dean’s knife-arm in its dying struggle, but Dean don’t even flinch, let alone drop his weapon.

Of course my stupid ass gets distracted by this—though in fairness to me, I _did_ think my friend was about to be eaten, so I was rushing over to try and save him—and I end up getting tackled from behind by the other were. My head bounces hard off the thin coat of sand atop the hard arena floor, and for a minute I’m so dazed I barely even notice all those claws sinking into my shoulder as the were flips me. I _do_ notice the were’s bloody hand drawing back, claws at the ready to punch straight through my chest and rip my heart out, but before I can even begin to think about defending myself, the were goes real stiff-like and that hand clenches into a fist, and I see the very tip of a silver knife push out through his chest on a trickle of blood.

And Dean, standing behind him, dirty and sweaty and bruised and bloody and _glorious_ , jaw clenched with effort and rage as he gives the knife a hard twist and then lifts his foot to kick the werewolf—now very dead—away from me.

The crowd erupts into a wild mix of cheers and jeers as Dean drops his knife and offers me his hand. The way we limp outta that ring, leaning on each other like we’re the only thing keeping the other standing, reminds me way too uncomfortably much of how Dean and Sam limped into the cage last week after whatever horrors they’d gone through then. Hurts my heart, and for more reasons than one. After all, _our_ horrors tonight might not be even half over yet.

_Come on, Castiel. We can’t keep doing this. We need you. Please. Let this be the last time._


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chapter yet to make up for the five-day wait on the update :) Happy holidays, my dears!
> 
> Please read the end note for a spoilery warning about this chapter if sexual assault may trigger you.

When me and Dean stumble back into the locker room, we have more company than usual. The ever-present guards are there, of course, but so’s the doc, and a well-dressed man I’ve never seen before. He nods at us and says, “Sit.”

Don’t gotta tell us twice. I’m _beat_ , and Dean looks at least twice as wrecked as I feel.

“Doctor,” the man says, waving expansively toward us like he’s offering the guy a gift instead of more unpaid, involuntary, distressing work to do.

“No infirmary?” Dean asks. I ain’t sure if he just wants to make sure that sigil gets sorted, or if he’s injured bad enough to need more than the doc can do here on a bench.

Suit Guy shakes his head. “The client requested you attend him as you are. The doctor’s just here to make sure you’re in no mortal danger.”

I snort. “How very generous of you.”

Suit Guy’s eyes snick black, then back to normal again. Huh. First demon we seen up close in a good long while. He must be important. Dean’s gone stiff beside me; I bet he’s working through what this evil fucker’s doing here just like I am. Or else weighing the odds of successfully exorcising him.

Which, let’s be real: zero. With just the two of us here, we’d both be pinned to the wall and Force-choked faster than we could finish saying _Exorcizamus te_. And Dean knows it, by the way he lets go of the tension in his muscles, just a little bit.

Until the doc sits down next to him, and he tenses up all over again. “I’m fine,” he says, leaning hard away from the doc’s reaching hands. I get that he don’t wanna be touched any more than necessary, not with how his ribs must be hurting or with what he’s about to walk into. But he took a beating in that ring; this _is_ necessary.

“You ain’t fine, Dean,” I say, even though I know damn well it’s gonna piss him off.

Sure enough, he glares at me, half betrayal and half fury, but I guess he ain’t got no more fight in him, because after that he just sighs and slumps over his busted ribs and grouses, “Fine. Whatever. Touch me, doc; every-fucking-one else does.”

The doc’s hands falter at that, and there’s pain on his face clear as day. Terrible as the circumstances are, I find myself breathing deep of that compassion, that rare flash of humanity in a place full of literal monsters.

“I just need to feel your ribs, maybe have a look at your head and your arm. I won’t do anything without telling you, okay?”

Suit Demon rolls his eyes at the doc’s gentling tone. So does Dean, but I bet you my upcoming pizza he appreciates the bedside manner.

“Like I said, doc: whatever.”                                                          

Dean sits like a goddamned stone statue through the doc’s exam, even though he’s in at least fifty different kinds of pain, not to mention clearly creeped out by being touched at all. But he ain’t one to show weakness to the enemy, and the enemy’s standing real close right now, watching with far too much interest as the doc feels up Dean’s ribs.

“Cracked, maybe, but not displaced,” the doc says to Suit Demon. “He should be all right if no one pushes too hard on his chest.”

“You mean like _you_ are?” Dean growls, swatting the doc’s hand away.

He goes back to statue mode as the doc checks his pupils, the cut at his hairline, the furrows the werewolf dug into his arm with its claws. Those the doc cleans out and puts half a dozen stitches in, and then he wraps them in gauze despite Suit Demon’s semi-warning of “Is that really necessary, doc?”

Then it’s my turn. I try to sit just as still and quiet as Dean did as the doc cleans the claw punctures in my shoulder and tapes a gauze square over them, but I ain’t ashamed to admit I’m not as tough as he is, cos let’s be real—that ain’t no realistic standard to hold a man to.

The doc shines a damn penlight in my eyes way too many damn times, like maybe he don’t quite like what he sees, but aside from a pounding headache I ain’t feeling too concussed. I don’t tell him that, though, cos I’m already scheming how to get to a sigil if we pass one in the halls, and said scheme requires them buying that I’m dizzy.

The doc finishes up by handing us each an antibiotic and a little cup of water, and then declares us fit enough to survive the night as long as the client ain’t too rough in the wrong places.

Yay.

“Just one client?” Dean asks, and only after he says it does it occur to me that I been hearing “client” singular for the past fifteen minutes without wondering what that meant. Now I’m wondering which one of us said client’s asked for.

“Yes,” Suit Demon says. “But he’s a very important one, so don’t even _think_ about fucking this up.” He crosses the little locker room in two steps and crowds right up into Dean’s face—the client must’ve asked for Dean, then. The kid goes all stone statue again while Suit Demon lays on the threats: “What we did to you last week’ll look like Club fucking Med if you fuck this up, you understand me?”

Somehow Dean works up the nerve to press the tips of two fingers to the center of Suit Demon’s chest and nudge him away. And somehow, Suit Demon lets him. “I get it, Chuckles. You don’t have to worry about me. Just make sure my damn pie is ready when I’m done.” He turns to me, eyes dropping lightning-fast to my loincloth—to the scalpel blade hidden in the seam—and back to my face. “But lemme have a minute alone with Frankie before I go. Just sixty seconds to say good-bye, okay?”

“No good-bye; he’s going with you, you stupid meatsack. The client wants _both_ of you.”

Dean’s bravado cracks, but only for an instant—not nearly long enough for me to decipher if he’s relieved or horrified to have someone to share this burden with. Horrified, probably, knowing that self-sacrificing moron. I’m feeling pretty horrified myself, but I’ll get through it, just like I’ve gotten through every other terrifying, fucked-up part of Monsterland I’ve ever faced. And hey, on the plus side, at least I don’t gotta find a way to pass Dean the scalpel blade now.

“On your feet, Pretty Woman. You too, Richard Gere.” I wonder if the demon’s calling me the rich dude or American Gigalo, not that it matters. Just something to think about other than what’s gonna be happening soon, is all. As I push to my feet and follow Suit Demon and Dean out the locker room (where we pick up three other guards, of course) and down the maze of halls, I let myself wonder what it says about an actor that he got cast in more than one movie about prostitutes.

But then I see the sigil.

Wherever we are—two, maybe three turns from the locker room, and shame on me for not paying attention because that’s a _rookie_ fucking mistake that could get us killed during an escape—we ain’t never been here before. The hall is interspersed with doors on both sides, set too far apart to be offices or closets. Storerooms, maybe. Maybe kitchens—they gotta feed us somewhere. In any case, right up between the third and fourth door on the left is a neatly painted sigil about three feet high.

Dean sees it too, cos just as we’re passing the third door, he stumbles and pauses and hunches over like his ribs’re hurting too bad to keep going, then pants, “I just need a second.”

One of the guards has his nightstick drawn back to strike before Dean even finishes speaking, but Suit Demon barks, “ _Don’t_ hurt him. Not now.” Then turns to Dean and says, “Five seconds.”

I only need two to work the scalpel blade out of my loincloth. “You know,” I say, pressing the fingers of my free hand to my temple, “I’m feeling kinda dizzy myself. Gimme just . . .” I half-walk half-stumble over to the wall where the sigil is, slump against it like I need it to stay upright. “Sorry, boss. Concussion.”

Suit demon checks his watch impatiently. But his eyes are still on me; thank God or Castiel or whoever that Dean’s smart enough to create a distraction. He straightens up, takes one step, cries out, and drops to his knees. Cries out again—probably for real this time cos no way hitting the hard floor like that did him any favors—and says, “I’m okay, I’m okay,” as two guards move to help him to his feet.

By the time he’s standing again, I’ve got four neat, thin, barely-there lines scraped out of the sigil, and the scalpel blade tucked back away. I’m half expecting something to happen—Castiel to swoop in, I guess—but when nothing does, I push off from the wall and say, “Me too. Let’s go.”

We’re led to another corridor—no sigils in that one—and then to the door all the way at the end of it, which opens onto the kind of penthouse suite you only ever see in movies. _Opulent_ , I think the word is: a thousand square feet, maybe, decked out like a studio apartment except with no windows. There’s a massive canopy bed, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers and a dressing table complete with gilded mirror, a wet bar and breakfast table, an ornate desk, a door on the side wall that probably leads to a ridiculous bathroom, sculptures and paintings, and . . . _jackpot_ —another sigil on the far wall, over a couch and two wingback chairs and a coffee table.

Suit demon gestures us to the bed, situated roughly dead center in the room, and makes us sit. The mattress is some high-class shit: memory foam or whatever they call it. “Will you behave, or do I need to chain you up?” He gestures at the canopy above our heads, and that’s when I realize there are tie points all over it, plus a few pairs of handcuffs wrapped around the frame.

“We’ll behave,” Dean says, small and quiet-like. I can’t tell if it’s an act or not, and it fucking kills me.

Suit Demon looks dubious, but he nods anyway. “All right, then. Our guest is waiting just outside. I’ll send him in.”

Suit Demon and the other guards leave. I’m halfway to my feet to reach that sigil before the last guard’s fully out the door, but our “guest” walks in less than a second later, and Dean pulls me back down again.

The demon saunters toward the bed—ain’t no other way to describe it—then stops about five feet away, smarmy smile plastered all over his borrowed face. The poor schmuck he’s riding was either an athlete or a gym rat, a good couple inches taller than Dean, and corporate-douchebag handsome, right down to the tailored suit and over-slicked hair.

“Dean Winchester,” he drawls, real satisfied and slow-like.

“Patrick Bateman,” Dean drawls right back. I don’t know who that is, and it don’t seem like the demon does either, but Dean looks proud and fierce as he glares up at it, and that’s good enough for me.

The demon takes two steps forward, so close to Dean now their knees are nearly touching. Dean’s gotta crane his neck up to keep eyes on the thing’s face, but he manages, somehow, not to make that look submissive.

“It’s _so good_ to see you again, Dean. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Though to be honest, I never even thought to hope for the good fortune of forcing your lover to watch what I’m about to do to you.”

What I’m watching is Dean watching the demon, so I catch the crease of confusion in his brows, the quick downward tick of his lips, before his face goes all I-ain’t-afraid-of-you again. “Oh yeah? Did I let you blow me once at a truck stop or something?”

The demon reaches out, runs a single fingertip across Dean’s cheek. Dean’s jaw clenches, but he don’t turn away or close his eyes or none of that. Doesn’t show a hint of weakness. “Or something,” the demon says. “You really don’t remember me? I got a nice new suit, I know, but come _on_ , Dean, we had _decades_ of fun when Daddy Alistair went to bed each night.”

Dean’s face pales so fast I’m afraid he’s gonna pass out on me. But he doesn’t. Doesn’t move at all, except for the slow spreading horror on his face. He’s all clenched jaw and big eyes and freckles, and the vein in his temple is pounding so hard my own heart speeds up to match its pace.

What kind of bad mojo is this guy that’s got Dean Fucking Winchester so afraid?

The demon reaches out to touch Dean again, and Dean bolts to his feet, sidesteps the demon with a nimbleness his injuries should make impossible. “I’ve changed my mind,” he says. He’s eight, ten feet away when he finally turns to me and says, “Come on, Frankie. We’re going back to the cage.”

I try to stand, but the demon waves a hand and some magic force shoves me right back down to the mattress. I can still feel it pressing on me even once I’m seated again, so heavy it’s hard to breathe.

For a long moment after that, the demon just stands there being smug, but the instant Dean starts for me, it spins and throws a hand out and shouts, “You don’t _get_ to say no to me, Dean!”

Dean flies backwards, slams into the wall hard enough to knock a picture off its hook. He’s too winded to shout, but his eyes are clenched shut and his teeth are bared all the way to the molars.

“Don’t you remember, Dean?” the demon asks, downright gleeful, taking a step forward, another one. His hand is still out, and he uses his power to drag Dean up the wall. Dean whimpers, heels thumping helplessly, fingers clawing at the plaster. “All those times you _begged_ me to fuck you?”

_What the . . ._

The demon must ease up a little, because Dean manages to take a breath, croaks out, “I didn’t beg for _shit._ You _tortured_ me, you fuck, and then you _raped_ me.”

The demon purses his lips, cocks his eyebrows like he’s weighing Dean’s version of the story against his own. But then he just shrugs, uses his power to pull Dean away from the wall and slam him back into it. “And now I get to do it all over again. And again, and again, and _again_ , all night long, Dean. And you’ve even got a real body this time! Isn’t Earth _wonderful_?”

 _Hell_. They must’ve met in Hell. _Oh God. Don’t do this to him. Don’t make him go through this again._ I try to stand, to _fight_. Still can’t. I’d probably be hyperventilating now if not for the pressure on my chest.

The demon drops his hand, and Dean crumples to the floor with a cry. He doesn’t get up, and something tells me he ain’t faking it this time either. When the demon stalks forward, he just curls up tighter, locks his forearms together in front of his face like a boxer on the defensive instead of . . . well, whatever the fuck kinda horror this is.

The first kick catches him in the thigh, the second right on those locked arms. Dean just cries out and huddles tighter, but the demon grabs him by the hair, pulls his head up, slaps him hard across the face and then backhands him on the rebound. Blood trickles from Dean’s nose, from a split in his lip. He hooks a hand around the arm fisting his hair, but there’s no strength in it; his fingers just curl there, shaking. He’s meeting the demon’s eyes, but the cocky defiance at the core of him is gone. It’s all just fear and pain and fury now.

“Say it,” the demon growls, giving Dean’s head a hard shake by the hair. “Go on, Dean, tell me you want my cock up your ass and I’ll stop hurting you.” The demon shrugs with one shoulder. “Well, with my hands, anyway.”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Dean growls, blood coating his bared teeth.

The demon tosses him by the head onto the floor, face up, then plants a heavy foot right on the family jewels. Dean roars, body trying to curl around the pain, but the demon’s power is keeping him pinned again. “ _Say it,_ Dean!”

And that’s when I realize that _I_ don’t feel the demon’s power keeping _me_ pinned anymore. Guess he got too distracted.

And for as much as that distraction is costing Dean, I damn well better make the most of it.

It’s just as hard as you think it is to put the kid’s cries outta my mind, to ignore the sounds of fists and feet striking flesh and the absolute filth spewing from the demon’s mouth, as I slink off the bed and into a crouch behind it. It’s slow going to the wall cos I gotta be quieter than a church mouse pissing on cotton if I ain’t gonna draw the demon’s notice. Fortunately—if you can call it that—Dean’s making plenty of cover noise, and the demon’s clearly getting off on beating his ass cos he hasn’t taken his eyes off Dean for even half a second since this whole ugly mess started. Which is why I manage to cross the dozen feet from the bed to the sigil on the back wall undetected.

I’m halfway through scratching my third line in the paint when the commotion gets closer behind me, and next thing I know I’m in the grip of the demon’s power again, spun around and slammed half against the couch, half against the sigil above it. I drop the scalpel blade on impact, but thank god the demon don’t seem to notice.

“I told you to watch,” he spits at me, like he thought I was just trying to get away or something. Not that I could call this a turn of good luck what with how much Dean’s paid for it, but maybe the demon really didn’t notice what I was doing over here. The fucker was too busy flinging Dean against the bed, forcing his upper body to the mattress with a bruising hand on his neck and ripping off Dean’s loincloth with his other hand.

Dean ain’t struggling no more—he’s so bruised and battered he probably couldn’t even stand right now, let alone fight—but his eyes are open, alert, spilling tears with every slow blink. Ain’t no way I can keep looking at that, and he probably don’t want me to anyhow, but the second I shift my gaze from Dean’s face to the bed, the demon shouts, “I said watch! You so much as fucking _blink_ , I will shove my whole goddamned _arm_ up his ass, you hear me?”

I don’t say nothing, but I settle my eyes somewhere on the middle of Dean’s tense back, and I guess that’s good enough for the demon cos he starts fumbling with the buttons on his suit pants.

And that, thank fucking God and Heaven and every other deity between, is when Castiel, Angel of the Lord, appears behind the demon on a whoosh of air and thrusts a silver short sword right through its heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some very violent attempted rape in this chapter. Please proceed with caution or skip the rest of the chapter after the sigil's scratched if this is triggering for you.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second-to-last chapter!

The demon sparks a bright yellow, sparks some more, and collapses dead at Castiel’s feet. The angel is so utterly magnificent and at the same time so strangely ordinary that I can’t find it in me to look away. Can’t help but think, though, of the meatsuit he just so cavalierly killed. I guess at least that guy’s suffering is over now. Too bad Dean’s ain’t.

Castiel’s panting like a race horse, like getting here took the wind right outta him. “We must hurry,” he says. Not _hello_ , not _are you okay_ , just right down to business. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, really.

Except I’m pretty sure Dean’s passed out on the floor, cos he ain’t bent over the mattress anymore, but he also ain’t on his feet. I rush from the couch to the other side of the bed to find him slumped in front of it. He ain’t unconscious, but he also ain’t having much luck with the whole getting-up thing.

Castiel seems to realize there’s something really wrong with Dean right around the moment I try to haul the kid to his feet and just make him shout instead. The angel’s face goes . . . well, _soft_ ain’t the right word, but something close to it anyway, and he shoulders me aside with a firm “Let me.”

Who am I to argue with an actual, literal angel of the Lord? I take a step back. Castiel crouches down in front of Dean and touches his forehead with the tips of two fingers.

Dean lurches, cries out, and I take a step forward by reflex. But Castiel puts a hand out, stilling me. Not by supernatural force, he don’t need that. Just by that silent reassurance that he’s trying to do the right thing. He touches Dean’s forehead again, gets another grunt and jolt out of Dean. Frowns and squints like he’s real confused.

“The warding is affecting my powers,” Castiel says. His voice sounds strained, and he’s panting again. “I’ve healed what I can. Do you think you can walk?”

“Yeah.” Dean’s voice is deeper and rougher than usual, but it’s also stronger than I expected it to be. Castiel offers him a hand and pulls him to his feet like he weighs eighteen pounds instead of one-eighty, and once Dean’s up, he stays up on his own. Whatever Castiel did, it obviously helped. And really it shouldn’t surprise me at all that angels can heal. Shame this one’s half on the fritz right now, though.

Castiel reaches into his ridiculous trench coat and pulls out a wood-handled dagger. “I thought you might find this useful,” he says, pressing it into Dean’s palm.

Dean thinks on it for a moment, turning it over in his hand, then sighs and winces and offers it to me. “Kills demons,” he says to my unspoken question. Which, how cool is _that_? He don’t say nothing else, but that’s okay. I don’t need him to admit he’s in no shape to fight right now.

“What about you?” I ask him, cos he’s still gotta be able to defend himself.

“Here,” Castiel says, then pulls yet another weapon from his trench coat, this time a sawed-off shotgun. Not sure what a shotgun’ll do against vamps or demons, but at least it’s a ranged weapon. When Dean takes it, Castiel fishes a bag of shells from his pocket. “Half rock salt, half silver.” Ah, well that explains it. Clever little shits, these guys are. “And holy water,” Castiel says, pulling a flask from his other pocket.

Dean takes that too, then asks, “Don’t suppose you got any clothes in there?” His tone is light, but it’s a bad cover; being naked means being vulnerable. In more ways than one, too, since he ain’t got nothing between him and monster claws to save his skin.

Castiel squints and tilts his head like a damn baby bird, _Why would I store clothes in my trench coat, Dean?_ clear as day across his face. But then something clicks, and he goes from confused to almost sad or maybe pitying, and then he shrugs out of his coat and hands it to Dean.

“Thanks,” Dean says, sliding into it and taking the time to button it up.

While he’s doing that, Castiel turns to me. “Do you require my jacket? I have no need of clothes to thermoregulate or protect me from harm, and modesty is strictly a human emotion.”

“Why the fuck not,” I accidentally say out loud because this is all so surreal I ain’t got no idea what _else_ to say. Castiel hands over the jacket, and I do up the two buttons as Dean’s finishing the last of his.

Once dressed, Dean starts off toward the door. “We gotta find Sam,” he says. “Follow me.” Because of course he was paying attention when they brought us here and knows how to get back.

But Castiel steps in front of him, silver blade at the ready, and says, “Direct me. I possess the lethal weapon; I’ll go first.”

Before Dean can get to arguing that the way he so clearly wants to, an alarm blares.

“That is very likely your friends,” Castiel says. “The warding was too thick for me to bring them past the perimeter fence, so I left them in the woods behind the complex. Don’t worry—they are heavily armed.”

“Sounds like the perfect distraction,” Dean says, then nudges Castiel, angel of the Lord, square between the shoulder blades. “Come on, let’s go. Hang a left at the end of the hall, then first right.”

Castiel storms out of the room. We follow, weapons raised. The halls are crawling with armed guards, but Dean shoots and I stab and Castiel cuts through them like a holy dervish even as our injuries slow us down.

Except by the time we slash our way back to the locker room, it’s pretty clear that something’s slowing Castiel down, too. The rest of the warding, probably, and there ain’t nothing we can do about that.

The angel’s panting harder than ever when three enormous baddies come running round the corner, and Dean gets exactly one shot off before me and him both get slammed against the wall by an invisible force.

_Fucking demons._

Once indisposed, we get ignored. The demons turn to Castiel instead, and the one in the lead snarls, “Angel,” and literally spits at Castiel’s feet. Castiel don’t flinch, though, just keeps his weapon raised and his body loose, looking for the opening. “What’s the matter, bird brain? Someone clip your wings?” When Castiel says nothing, just slowly circles them as they slowly circle him, the demon says, “This is _our_ house, Angry Bird. You aren’t special here.”

“I beg to differ,” Castiel says, calm as ever like he ain’t outnumbered three to one without his mojo, like me and Dean ain’t pinned to the wall like bugs.

And then the angel strikes.

The fight goes like most any other death-match between highly trained opponents: fast, fluid, and brutal. It’s hard to track the action what with how tight and quick it all is and us being crushed to a wall—and just how are they keeping us up here while fighting an angel anyway?—but it’s impossible to miss the way Castiel’s flagging. He’s been stabbed at least a few times; his white dress shirt is drenched in blood over his left chest, his stomach, his right shoulder blade, his right forearm. His face is bloody too. I got no idea if you can kill an angel, or if these demons know how even if it is possible, but one way or another they might very well get the best of him.

Dean shouts _Cas!_ as one of the demons slams a nightstick into the side of the angel’s head. Castiel goes down like a sack of bricks, and Dean starts struggling something fierce to break the hold pinning him to the wall, but he don’t move any further than Castiel does—which is to say not at all. A knife-wielding demon approaches Castiel, bends down to haul him up by the hair and . . . what? Stab him in the heart? Slit his throat? Will that do the trick?

Thank God I don’t get to find out, because Castiel surges up at the last instant and plunges his blade into the demon’s heart. The thing sparks and crackles a bright yellow, then collapses to the floor. But it looks like Castiel used the last of his strength to pull that trick, because he don’t take advantage of the opening he’s just made. And when the two remaining demons charge him, one manages to kick his blade away, and the other punches him repeatedly in the face, then grabs him by the throat and starts chanting in Latin.

“ _Omni potentis Dei potestatem invoco_ ,” the demon snarls. “ _Omni potentis Dei potestatem invoco_. _Abrogo terra, hoc angelorum in obse quantum_ —” Castiel’s mouth drops open, and blinding blue-white light starts leaking from his eyes and nose and mouth. He looks like he’s choking on it. Dean shouts his name again as the demon keeps chanting. “— _Domine expuere_. _Domine expuere . . ._ ”

The light grows brighter, spewing out of Castiel like vital fluid. The demon keeps chanting, and I’m so sure this ain’t gonna end well that I turn to Dean to say _thanks for everything_ and _I’m sorry I let you down_.

Which is exactly when, in the second fit of spectacular timing this shitty evening, Sam Fucking Winchester rounds the corner and barks, “Shut up.” I probably ain’t as surprised as I should be when the demon, well, _does_. “Your pronunciation _sucks_ , by the way.” Sam says, and then he throws a hand out and squeezes his eyes closed, and a second later both demons drop to their knees and clutch at their throats and start choking out sickly plumes of black smoke.

The hold pressing me and Dean to the wall breaks, and Dean takes a moment to stare at his brother, stunned and . . . horrified, maybe? . . . before rushing over to where Castiel lay in a heap in the middle of the hallway.

I’m worried for the angel, sure, but I’m too busy watching Sam _exorcise demons with his mind_ to really think about much else until the last of the black smoke burns marks into the floor and the poor hosts slump over, unconscious or dead.

Sam’s nose is bleeding by the time he’s done, but he’s grinning fiercely as he wipes at the mess.

Dean’s got Castiel back on his feet, and they kinda look like they’re holding each other up, but they limp their way on over to Sam, and then Dean claps his brother’s shoulder and asks, “How’d you get out?”

Sam goes real bashful all the sudden, eyes dropping to the floor and hand going to the back of his neck. It occurs to me how fucking surreal this whole night still is, standing pantsless in the middle of a monster prison with an angel of the fucking Lord while alarms blare and Sam Fucking Winchester gets shy after killing demons _with his mind_. “Uh. I um. Don’t get mad, okay, but I heard the alarm go off and I fucking panicked and I kind of . . . _thought_ the lock open?”

Castiel scowls, but Dean’s face does something real funny, like he can’t decide if he’s proud or terrified or mad as a hornet.  

Sam shrugs. “Anyway, then it was me and like twenty other pissed off hunters. I dipped the concrete screw in the dead man’s blood you stole, dropped two vamps with it, took their weapons, and . . .” He shrugs again. “Here I am.”

This time Dean smiles, no question about it. “That’s my boy, Sammy,” he says, clapping Sam’s shoulder like proud big brothers do. “That’s my boy.”

And then he passes out right into Sam’s arms.


	13. Chapter 13

Getting out’s real easy after that, what with all those pissed-off hunters on the loose inside and the Winchesters’ friends killing things on the outside. Castiel’s still weak, but he ain’t lost the ability to scoop up Dean like he’s light as a feather. Sam obviously ain’t happy about letting someone else carry Dean—plus I get the feeling like maybe he don’t quite _trust_ Castiel all the way, though God knows why—but he takes point with the demon killing knife and clears the way of what few monsters remain between us and freedom.

We meet up with a tight group of hunters on the outside. One of them, a shorter guy maybe my age in a scruffy beard and even scruffier trucker hat, hugs Sam so fiercely I half expect him to crack the kid’s ribs. Then he turns to Cas, eyes on Dean cradled to his chest bridal-style, and asks, “What happened? He okay?”

“He will be. Hurry; we must clear the fence.”

A big scowling black guy casually decapitates a vampire fleeing the compound. “I got point,” he says, and no one seems to think this is a bad idea, so he files out and we all follow. Two women take up the rear—a mother and daughter by their matching scowls and blonde hair—and Sam and I flank Castiel and his unconscious cargo.

The fighting’s thinner here; most of the monsters never made it out the door, and they ain’t nothing we can’t handle with a group this size, even with the angel unable to fight. In maybe two minutes we’ve crossed the yard and exited the double fence, which someone conveniently blew with C4.

We stop, and Castiel says, “Everyone grab on to me.”

“Bend your knees,” Sam murmurs with a faint smile.

I get a hold of the angel’s shirtsleeve and follow Sam’s advice, and next I know we’re all standing in the living room of a log home, fire burning warm in the woodstove and snow falling thick out the windows. I’m damn glad I bent my knees cos otherwise I’d probably be flat on my ass. As it is, my stomach rolls like it ain’t quite in the right place inside me anymore.

“Um.”

I’m ignored, but I’m feeling too unbalanced to push things. The four hunters we met outside are obviously familiar with this place, because they all disperse and get busy. Three peel off to various rooms to check the wards and salt lines. Trucker Cap hits up the kitchen and gets some water boiling. Castiel, meanwhile, places Dean down on a couch covered in crocheted throw blankets and presses two fingers to his forehead.

His mojo’s clearly back, because a few seconds later Dean gasps awake and flails upright, and he don’t even so much as wince at all that movement. Sam’s by his side before he can form a question, saying, “It’s okay, Dean, we did it, we got out. How do you feel?”

Dean seems to think seriously on that for a moment, flexing his arms and legs and turning his torso from side to side before answering. “Good. Yeah. M’good.”

He tries to stand, but Castiel puts a firm hand on his shoulder and guides him back to the couch. “I healed your injuries, but I cannot cure your exhaustion. You must rest.” He turns to Sam. “You too, Sam.”

Sam looks torn, like there’s something more important he should be doing—and ain’t that just like both of those morons to take care of themselves last. Trucker Cap seems to agree, cos he turns to them from where he’s hovering at the stove and says, “Sit down, you idjits.”

Sam sits.           

“And I’m sorry, I just . . . I gotta ask. What are you two _wearing_?”

Dean plucks at Castiel’s trench coat like he’s too weary to bother explaining. Sam looks down at himself like somewhere in the last four months he’s completely forgotten the fact that he’s dressed in a leather loincloth. God knows a man can get used to pretty much anything; I certainly have.

“Uh,” Sam says. “We should probably change.” But he doesn’t move. Just asks the question I been meaning to ask for five minutes now, instead: “Where are we?”

“Michigan.”

Teleporting. Jesus fucking Christ.

Trucker Cap fishes in a cabinet, comes out with a box of rice and a can of beans. “Rufus ‘n I cleared out a nest of vamps here maybe two months back. Their leader owned this place for fifty years. Ain’t no way to trace it back to us, and we warded it to high Heaven; we’re safe here. Plus,” Trucker Cap grins, though it don’t look much full of joy to me, “four bedrooms. Two hot showers. And spare clothes for all of you.”

That’s my cue if ever there was one. I shrug out of Castiel’s suit jacket, hand it back to him with a thank-you, and turn to the boys. “You want first shower?”

Dean’s just sitting there looking exhausted and miserable, so it’s no surprise when he shakes his head. “Go ahead, Frankie. I’m just gonna . . .” He waves ambiguously to one of the many doors leading off the great room, through which I can see a pair of beds and a dresser.

“Yeah, me too,” says Sam. He don’t look especially tired, but I’m betting he ain’t willing to let Dean out of his sight right now.

“Wait.” Castiel steps forward as Sam stands up, and he puts a hand out, two fingers extended. “May I?” Sam nods, and when Castiel touches him, all his cuts and bruises disappear. Fuck if that ain’t the most amazing thing I ever seen, even the second time around.

“Frankie too,” Sam says, and Castiel replies, “Of course, my apologies,” but waits for my nod of approval too before he touches those fingers to me.

It’s a strange sensation, being healed—cool and soothing and soft, gentle as can be, nothing like how it looked when he tried it on Dean back in the prison. I don’t feel much different when he’s done, cept my pain is gone; I still wanna sleep for a year.

But, shower first.

This cabin might be old, but the bathroom’s clearly been remodeled sometime in the last few years cos the fixtures are modern and the water pressure’s great. By the time I get out and dry off and find some clothes that fit in the dresser in the empty bedroom, the young woman’s setting the table, and Trucker Cap’s dishing out rice and beans. Dean and Sam are missing, but right now I bet they need sleep more than food anyway.

The older woman approaches me and holds out her hand to shake. “Hi, Frankie. We were never properly introduced. I’m Ellen.” She nods toward the younger girl. “This is my daughter, Jo, and those two curmudgeonly assholes over there are Bobby and Rufus.”

I shake her hand. Firm grip. Calloused skin. She’s fiercely beautiful, and I ain’t just saying that cos she’s the first woman I’ve seen in over four months.

“Nice to meet y’all.” One person’s missing, though. “Castiel leave?”

“He went back to the prison,” Trucker Cap—er, Bobby—says. “Wanted to make sure no one escaped but the humans. Plus he’s gonna make a food run for us on the way back; we’re all wanted, so it’s tough to pop into a supermarket these days unless you can _literally_ pop in and out again.”

“I hope he brings pie.”

Bobby’s expression turns almost painfully fond. “So Dean’s told you about his one true love, eh?”

“I love what now?”

We all turn at once to see Dean—dressed now in a pair of sweats and a baggy t-shirt and thick wool socks—leaning heavily against the frame of his bedroom door, eyes drooping and hair mussed.

“Couldn’t sleep, sugar?” Ellen says instead of answering him. There’s concern in her voice, but it ain’t smothering or patronizing at all.

Still, Dean’s gaze drops to the floor, and he blushes a little. “Guess I wasn’t so tired after all.”

Nightmares, then. Can’t blame the kid. But he’s practically squirming under all those sympathetic gazes from his friends, so I rescue him by gesturing to the kitchen table and saying, “Dinner’s on.”

“Dean?” Sam’s concerned voice floats out from behind Dean, and a second later he’s in the doorway too, dressed like Dean except the sweats are at least three inches too short on him so his socks are showing halfway up his calves. Dean doesn’t answer, but he heads to the table and sits down, so of course Sam follows.

There’s something real natural-looking about these six folks sitting round the supper table together, like they’ve done it a thousand times before, like they’ve all known each other forever. Kinda makes me feel like I ain’t got no place here, you know? I don’t know these people. They ain’t _my_ family.

That fact shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, but the pain surges something fierce as I think back on my wife, the kids we wanted to have, the _life_ we wanted to have.

“Frankie?”

I realize Ellen’s holding out a glass of—is that scotch? “Oh God yes, thank you, darlin’.” It’s the good shit, too, not that I’m sure I can tell anymore, what with how long it’s been since I last had a drink. I gulp it down way too fast, but Ellen just passes me the bottle—and yup, Johnny Walker Blue—to refill my glass.

We all eat and drink in silence for a bit, but then Dean puts down his spoon, meal three-fourths untouched, and says, “If we’re in hiding, that means it’s still real bad out there, right?”

“Well it ain’t good, anyway,” Bobby says. “Lot more monsters. Lot more demons. Dunno why, but they’ve kept it low-key; the civilian world’s still in the dark, more or less.”

“Lotta dead hunters, though,” Rufus says. “Half my network’s disappeared. Whatever the baddies are planning, they ain’t afraid of us anymore.”

Dean slumps deeper in his chair, throws back his glass of scotch and gestures me for the bottle. “It’s the freaking apocalypse, that’s what they’re planning.” He downs his refill, too. Fills it again. Everyone looks at him, but no one says anything. “We should’ve let Uriel nuke the damn town.

“No, you shouldn’t have.” I’m the only one who jumps at Castiel’s sudden appearance. He’s back in his trench coat, even though Dean hadn’t returned it to him before he left, and he’s holding a bakery pie box in both hands like an offering. “You did the right thing, Dean.”

Dean downs his third glass of scotch in five minutes, slams the empty tumbler on the table. He’s already well on his way to getting drunk, if the raw hurt he can’t keep off his face is any indication. “ _How_ , Cas? How is this not all my fault, huh? Cos the way I see it, none of this would’ve happened if I’d just shut up and let Uriel lob the holy hand grenade!”

“ _Our_ fault,” Sam says quietly.

Dean practically whirls on him. “What?”

Sam meets his eyes, strong and steady. “I said _our_ fault. We made that decision _together_ , Dean.”

“And if you’ll recall,” Castiel adds, “I believed it to be the correct decision as well.”

“And yet here we are,” Dean snarls, reaching for the bottle again. Jo’s quicker, though; she stands and snatches it away.

“ _Jo_.” Dean’s glare would’ve made a lesser man—er, woman—piss their pants. When she doesn’t back down, he says, deadly soft, “I’ve just spent over four months being fought like a damn dog and, oh, FYI, tortured and raped on the regular in between. And here’s another gem”—he thrusts a finger at Sam—“they made my brother a demon blood junkie who can move shit with his fucking _mind_! So if I wanna get drunk? _I’ll get fucking drunk_!”

The shock and horror on everyone’s face is almost comical; it’s been a long damn time since I seen a group of people look so damn uncomfortable. Guess they ain’t used to Dean sharing like that. Even if they were, that was probably the last thing they were hoping he’d say.

The look on Sam’s face, though, that ain’t even close to comical. The poor kid’s mortified, hunched all down in his chair like he’s hoping it’ll swallow him right up.

Jo looks pretty mortified too. She sits, red-faced, eyes darting everywhere but at Dean and Sam, and slides the bottle toward him. He can’t reach it—don’t even bother to try—so Ellen just stands up and brings it to him, fills his glass right to the top and then sets the bottle by his left hand. Does all of this and then sits back down without saying a word.

Castiel’s still hovering a few feet from the table. He’s the only one among the rescue crew who don’t look miserable. “You saved 1,214 souls the day you stopped Uriel. Even if you believe yourself to be at fault for the deaths that followed—and they are, by the way, many fewer than the number you saved—have you not yet paid your penance?”

Dean just stares at Cas for a long time. I couldn’t read the expression on his face if my life depended on it, but at least he ain’t shouting no more.

Finally, he downs his last glass of scotch and stands from the table. “I’m going to bed,” he says, and when he leaves, he takes the bottle with him.

In the morning, Dean joins us, freshly showered, over eggs and bacon and pancakes and coffee like none of last night even happened. If he’s hungover, he doesn’t let on. If he slept badly, he doesn’t let that on either. In fact, he’s all ravenous appetite and happy humming noises over his food—and some of Sam’s food, too.

“So,” he says when he’s polished off maybe his tenth slice of bacon. My arteries are hardening just watching him; guess it’s a good thing hunters got too short a shelf life to die of heart disease. “There’s a mess to clean up. Tell me everything.”

Bobby and Rufus bring maps to the table, spread them around the remnants of breakfast. Point out the strongholds they’ve breached, the ones they haven’t. The patterns they’ve found. The plans they suspect. Everyone treats the brothers like nothing bad ever happened, and it seems to be exactly what both of them need. They nod along, as intently focused as I’ve ever seen them, absorbing four months and change of missing information in less than an hour.

“All right,” Dean says when everyone’s done talking. He’s drinking coffee now instead of scotch, and he gets up to pour himself another cup. “You all good to roll? If we head out in thirty, we can hit Chicago by dinner, kidnap ourselves a demon and ask him some polite questions about the operation there.”

Everyone starts exchanging looks I ain’t exactly privy to, but it don’t take a genius to figure it out. This ain’t healthy coping, and Dean needs rest before he charges back into the fray. We all do. Badly.

But good luck telling _him_ that.

“You know what,” Sam says. “I’m all for it, Dean, I really am. But I’m _beat_. I just need, like, a day, man. The demons’ll still be there tomorrow.”

Dean scowls at him like he knows exactly what shit he’s pulling. “Yeah? And how many people’re gonna die between today and tomorrow cos we were sitting here with our dicks in our hands, huh?”

“Uh, objection,” Jo says. “And I ain’t holding _yours_ , so don’t even go there.”

The joke falls pretty flat, but I appreciate her trying.

Castiel steps into the awkwardness like he and it are old friends. “I too could use some time to restore my grace. Yesterday was extremely taxing to me.”

Dean just blinks at him for a long moment, then throws his hands up and says, “Fine. Fine, you win. _One_ day. We’ll roll out at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow.”

No one argues, even though the biggest argument of them all is that by this time tomorrow, Sam’ll be detoxing and in no shape to travel. But that ain’t my complaint to lodge; it’s Sam’s, and he says nothing.

Neither does Dean, who snatches Bobby’s hunter journal off the pile of maps and books on the table and skulks to the couch to study recent history. Sam, shoulders hunched and face strained, wanders off to clean up breakfast. Ellen and Jo and Bobby and Rufus stay huddled over the kitchen table, exchanging more meaningful looks.

Which leaves me and Cas standing there being awkward again. That’s probably my cue.

“Uh, listen, guys.” Seven sets of eyes turn my way, and suddenly I feel more naked now than I did in that fucking loincloth. “I uh. Thank you, really, for everything. You mind if I wait til tomorrow to head out too?”

Dean just squints at me like I’m nuts. “Huh?”

“Well, I figure I could check out those cattle deaths in Missouri while you head to Chicago.”

Sam joins in on Dean’s confused squint. “If you . . . if you want?”

Dean closes Bobby’s journal with a thump, tosses it on the couch, and stands. “No.” He takes a few steps toward me while I stand there trying to puzzle out why he don’t trust me to look into demon signs. He stops in front of me, lays a hand on my shoulder. “Frankie, you ain’t an idiot, so stop acting like one, okay?”

Now it’s _my_ turn to squint, but I don’t know what to say to that, so Dean just plows on.

“You’re an honorary Winchester now, Frankie. We need you, and we don’t leave our family behind.”

 “I . . .” I don’t know how to finish that sentence, just blink and swallow instead.

“That’s right,” Sam says, coming over to join us. He claps a hand on my other shoulder.

“So rest up, Frankie, and strap in. Cos we got work to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand, done! Thank you to everyone who read along, and ESPECIALLY to all you lovely folks who left kudos and comments (and if you've made it this far and haven't yet, please feed your author!)--you kept me going even when the story got big and out of my hands and I wanted to stop.
> 
> This universe has lots of fun potential, so I might write another story in it some other time if you'd all be interested.
> 
> Merry Christmas to all you lovely gentiles, and Happy Hanukkah to all my lovely MOTs <3


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